Make Creepy Realistic Eyeballs

These eyeballs are perfect for creepy flowers, like on my Halloween wreath, or for filling clear apothecary jars, giving your Zombie mannequin that extra scream factor, floating punch bowl garnishes, etc. (Just kidding. These are not food safe. But it would be funny.)

Talk about a sight for sore eyes!

(See? I'm not even sorry.)

• $1 pack of eyeballs from the dollar store (we got ours at Dollar Tree)

(Can't find them? Then try ping pong balls!)

• Red acrylic craft paint
• Matching red yarn (just a tiny bit - that snippet up there made at least 3 eyes)
• Clear nail polish
• Craft glue
• Tweezers

Begin by painting just over half of each plastic ball in the red craft paint. To keep them from rolling around while they dried, I stuck strips of double-stick tape on a piece of cardboard:

Paint over the existing irises of the Dollar Tree eyes. If you're making eyeball flowers, then this side will be hidden, so don't worry if it still shows through. (I only used one coat of paint.)

Use your brush to make the paint edge a bit streaky, like this:

It may help to add the streaky bits after the rest of the paint has dried, so you can hang on to the back side.

After they dried, I found my paint palette made a great holder:

Now, you *could* do an image search for your own eye irises, but I'm here to tell you now: you will see some DISTURBING STUFF. [twitch] So let me save you the trauma:

Print out 2 or 3 of those .jpgs on plain printer paper, so you'll have plenty of colors to choose from. I found I preferred the blues and greens, though the browny golds probably look most realistic.

Print the irises so they're each around 3/4 of an inch across:

Carefully cut them out, and make tiny snips with your scissors leading in toward the pupil; about 6-8 slits each. This will help the paper curve to fit the eyeball.

Attach the irises with any clear craft glue, holding the edges 'til they dry, so they're as flush as possible:

You could almost stop there, but this next step is where the creepy magic happens:

First, cut & separate several small strands of your red yarn, like so:

Now paint a small section of your eyeball with clear nail polish, and while it's still wet, stick the edges of the yarn in, like this:

If necessary, use your tweezers to move the yarn around so the ends fork out like veins. Don't get the yarn too close to the iris, though; it won't look right. When you're happy with how your "vein" looks, trim off the excess yarn from the back side. Repeat for the whole eye.

This will get sticky fast, so be sure to clean off your tweezers often, and don't worry if you end up literally getting the hairy eyeball:

Just let it dry, then trim off the worst of the fuzzies.

The final step is one last heavy coat of clear nail polish. This will help stick down any remaining yarn fuzz, and also give your eyes that oh-so-creepy wet shine:

If your nail polish is especially thick, it may be easiest to actually pour a few drops on to the iris, then use the brush to smooth it down the sides.

I didn't bother clear-coating the back sides of my eyes, but if you plan to have the backs visible, you may want to.

And you're done! Now go hide some eyeballs in your spouse's coffee mug. Or make a pretty bouquet: