{"id":555,"date":"2021-11-28T21:14:08","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T21:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aliandlizzy.com\/?p=555"},"modified":"2021-12-12T18:00:26","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T18:00:26","slug":"puppets-creating-eyes-with-resin-and-silicone-baking-shapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aliandlizzy.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/28\/puppets-creating-eyes-with-resin-and-silicone-baking-shapes\/","title":{"rendered":"Puppets: creating eyes with resin and silicone baking shapes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Weighing the resin components<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Muppet Show used to be one of my favorites when I was very young. I have always liked their crazy characters and would fancy to create it one day myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tutorials and blogs: good preparation for your first puppet<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently I stumbled on the very good tutorials by Adam Kreutinger. He is an very experienced puppet maker next to his work as a costume maker. His videos are fun to watch, he is very passionate about puppets and shows how to create them in quite an amount of detail. There is tons of hours of material to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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pouring the resin into the flimsy baking form<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Why creating eyes yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to create your own puppet you can buy all sorts of eyes but I think it is more fun to also create your own set of eyes. It also enables you to completely design it to your own taste. If you do this more often it is also cheaper to do it yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using a mold and resin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today I had my first experience in using Resin and it was partly based on the tutorial by Adam Kreutinger, however, I bought half balls silicone baking shapes as a start. You can create a mold yourself from silicones but I wanted to skip that part. When I received these shapes by mail I already thought that these may be made of a bit too flimsy material. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First attempt: the top of the ball turned out to be flat… <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The resin itself is easy to work with. You can either mix by same volumes of part a and b or weigh them in ration of A:B=10:9. Having a pharmacy background, I knew the weighing would be more accurate so I chose for that option. After stirring the 2 components very well together for a couple of minutes, you can fill your form and it hardens in \u00b110 minutes already and the material feels quite sturdy when hardened. On the package it warns you to not breathe it in or have it touch your skin but I felt it was odorless. Anyway, it is better to use it in a well ventilated space while wearing cloves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Baking forms on top of a bowl with water<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My first attempt turned out quite bad… the baking forms were indeed too flimsy and due to the weight of the resin its shape changed and it turned out as balls with a flat top…. not so great. Luckily my boyfriend was closeby and he likes to come with Mac Gyver solutions: use of a bowl of water where the baking shape could float on. This would avoid the flimsy material to change its shape when filling it with resin. This worked much better! I think the balls are still not perfectly round but quite close to it. When further finishing touches are added, e.g. the eyelids, you will not notice the remaining irregularity anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The resin hardens within only 10 minutes. During that time it suddenly turns from transparent into white.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Sanding & Painting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After hardening, sand them with sanding paper 120 or finer. Spray paint them with the desired colour. Without paint these may look already well but it protects them from possible discoloration. Use a little block or something similar under the eyeball so that you can also reach the bottom edge with the paint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ensure to be able to reach the bottom edge as well<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Pupils<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are several options for creating pupils. I used felt for my puppet. With scissors, the pupils probably won’t become perfect circles. I used punching tools with a hammer instead and it worked very well. You can also try punching pliers, but the circles are usually a bit smaller. My punching set came in 15 sizes, from 2 mm to 22 mm diameter so there is a good choice for how big the pupils can be made.
Other puppet makers sometimes use black plastic safety eyes where they saw away the protrusion on the back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pupils can be created with felt, using punching tools and a hammer (example with white felt just to illustrate process)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I am curious about your experience with creating puppet eyes? Please share by commenting to this post!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My lessons learned when using resin:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n