Halloween Special DIY Project - Make a Jar of Spooky Eyeballs

You will need:

• A small glass jar
• Polymer clay in white, translucent, blue, green, brown & black
• Baking tile
• Craft Knife
• Liquid clay
• Domestic oven
• Paper & fine tipped pen
• Cotton sewing thread

Instructions:

1. Set the oven to 130 degrees C (or equivalent gas Mark).

2. Mix together equal amounts of white and translucent clay. Roll into a long snake of clay and cut into even pieces about 1/16th of an inch.

3. Roll each section into an eyeball about 1/8th inch in diameter. You will need about 12-13 eyes to fill one jar.

4. Put the eyeballs into bake for 10 minutes. This preliminary bake will just harden the clay enough to prevent squashing out of shape when they are put into the jar.

5. Meanwhile mix a tiny amount of brown, green & blue for the iris colours.  You will also need a tiny blob of black for the pupils of each eyeball.

6. Make thin worms of these colours and cut off little slices.

7. Squash one roundel of colour onto the part-cooked white eyeball with your finger. Followed by an even tinier ball of black for the pupil of each eye.

8. Return to the oven for a further 5-8 minutes.

9. Layer the jar with eyeballs and liquid clay, using a tooth pick to turn the balls so that the iris/pupils face outwards for effect, and pricking any air bubbles. The liquid clay is opaque at the moment, but will clear up when baked.

10. Bake the glass jar full of eyeballs in a conventional oven as directed on the packet.

11. Colour a scrap of paper with dirty paint water, tea or coffee.

12. Cut a circle of paper just large enough to go over the jar and a second one for the label.

13. Write on the label with a fine marker pen, or use your computer as I have.

14. When the jar is cool, glue the label in place and put the paper circle over the top, tying it down with a length of fine cotton thread.

Glass Jars: Platt’s Mini Packages www.plattsminipackages.co.uk (you will have to copy and paste this website address into your browser)

Polymer clay & liquid Fimo: Widely available from all good hobby shops