Print PDF
Favorite
Email
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...
I eventually figured that out. I thought of a whole bunch of stuff that I could use, and came up with paper machie...
Remove these ads by
Signing UpStep 1Make 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...
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...
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
Good idea, I'll do this for Halloween!
Mickaël
I love your through instructions, very informative and helpful!
Thanks!!!
thx.