Eyeball Door Hanging

Introduction: Eyeball Door Hanging

This is a very cool prop to hang on your door or wall. It will get great response because it is very unique and unusual. Especially since you have to make it from scratch and no one else will have an eyeball quite like yours. This prop started out for the simple need to put something on my front door for Halloween. I had some tacky old lady type door hanging that had pumpkins on it and said "Welcome to our Patch" and that had to go. So after some thinking, it was decided that an eyeball would make a good door hanging. The question was... How?

I eventually figured that out. I thought of a whole bunch of stuff that I could use, and came up with paper machie...

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Step 1: Make the Paper Machie Eye

To make the eye, I inflated a balloon to the size I wanted. The balloon served as the base to put the paper machie over. For the basics of paper machie, keep on reading.

Here's how I make paper machie glue:

1- Get some sort of plastic container. I like using the quart size Chinese restaurant soup containers. I have them lying around the house, and they are disposable, so who cares if you're filling them with glue and paper.

2- Get some flour. It doesn't matter if it's bleached or unbleached at this point, but later on when doing the final steps I would recommend using bleached flour, so why not use it all the way through? Put a few spoonfulls into the container. The exact amount really doesn't matter. On average, I put 3-4 scoops into a quart size container.

3- Add some salt to the flour. I read that it keeps the bugs from eating the flour in you paper machie, so I'm going with adding salt. Again, the exact amount doesn't matter. I use a lot less salt than flour in the mixture.

4- Add water. Normal tap water will do. Fill it up to the top of the container and mix well. You want the clumps of flour to be broken up while you mixing, and sometimes that takes some work on the first mix.

And there you have it, paper machie glue. Now take whatever kind of paper scraps you can find and rip them up into strips. Old newspapers, junk mail, Christmas catalogs, it all works. Dip the strips one at a time into the well mixed glue. Crumple them up while submerged to get all of the paper's fibers well soaked. Then remove the paper from the glue and rub off any flour that didn't get mixed properly (you'll have this problem at first, but as you do more and more, the flour will get mixed better and better). Take the glue covered paper and stick it on the balloon. Repeat this until the top half of the balloon is covered. Then do another layer of paper. I like alternating between two different types of paper so I know where I covered and where I didn't on each layer. Do three layers of paper and let the balloon dry overnight. Then do three more layers and eye dry for a few days. In this time, the balloon will probably deflate, and that's a good thing. That means all you will have is the paper machie eye. If it doesn't deflate, pop the balloon once fully dry.

Then move on to the next step...

Step 2: Paint the Eye White

If your paper machie eye is dry, it's time to paint it.

Your first layer of paint should be white. Paint the entire eyeball white so it covers all of the print on the newspaper. This may take a few coats. I used a white acrylic paint with a big paint brush that you paint walls with. Let the paint dry, and move on...

Step 3: Measure & Paint the Iris

My next step was to draw the pupil and the iris on the eye. I started this out by taking a compass (the one that you draw circles with-- not tell which direction you are going in) and drawing one circle in the center of the eye, and then using the same center point, drawing another circle with a bigger radius. I then painted the smaller, inner circle black. This is for the iris of the eyeball.

Step 4: Pupil & Veins...

After the iris was dry, I painted the pupil. I started out by putting the darker colors around the edge of the pupil (the outer circle), and then getting lighter as I got closer to the iris. I used small brush strokes, with a bunch of mixed colors in the green color palette. You don't really need any artistic talent to do this, but it would help.

The last and final step which is optional is to paint veins on the eye. I thought it was a nice touch. They could be in any random pattern. It doesn't really matter.

I had a hook on my front door already, so I placed my eyeball over that. If you don't already have a place to hang your eye, make one. A nail in a wall and a bit of wire in the paper machie would work wonderfully for hanging this eye.

Have fun playing optometrist...

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    6 Discussions

    i'm going to do this in my house and have had the same idea but did not know how to make it. I wanted to do cardboard cuz it is super easy but not so much to make into a half sphere. I have a plastic salad bowl that would work great if I just wrapped it in white paper. Just have to ask the parentals.


    8 years ago on Introduction

    You probably meant paper maché.

    Good idea, I'll do this for Halloween!



    10 years ago on Introduction

    add a motion sensor that makes it say something like "I can seee yooouuuu!"


    10 years ago on Step 4

    I've got to try this!!!

    I love your through instructions, very informative and helpful!



    12 years ago on Introduction

    I made a very similar eye for an archery competition a few months back. I filled it up with a can of expanding foam insulation from the lumberyard to make it a bit more solid.