Make a Mad Eye Moody Mad Eye

Ok, it's 10 o'clock at night, too early for bed, and boy, I'd love to be able to see through walls, because my neighbours are making one hell of a racket... I know, I'll make a magic eye, a MAD MAGIC EYE. (big sigh) At the risk of looking like a complete Harry Potter nut (it's the kids, not me; honest guv...) I'll risk posting one more Harry Potter type project.

This one is really easy and looks absolutely wicked. I was able to finish it by midnight and that included designing it as I went along and taking the photos, so I reckon you could probably make this in less than an hour... if you have the stuff to hand, that is.

Mad Eye Moody was one of my favourite Harry Potter characters. Brusque but brutally honest, tough and resourceful, with a compassionate side, he is the wizarding world's best known cyborg as a result of his prosthetic magical eye which can rotate 360 degrees and see through almost everything (including walls, doors, invisibility cloaks and the back of his own head), hence the nickname "Mad-Eye".

Please take a moment to make this mad eye, in his honour and wear it with pride. Unfortunately my mad eye, while looking the part, actually impedes your vision, being more of a patch than a bionic eye, becuase the whole magical thing was beyond the scope of this instructable.

Happy mad eye making.

If you like making stuff from junk, then why not have a look at my site dadcando where you'll find a few really nice making from junk projects on there which you should have fun with.

Also look out for my instructable on putting your self in the picture, where I show you how I made my final poster image (coming soon).

Step 1: Bits You'll Need

You don't need much to make the Mad Eye. Becuase this is a project made out of junk, you might have to be inventive, I have given a few alternatives. I used:

Table Tennis Ball (eye)
Old leather watch Strap
Strip of fabric from an old pair of trousers
A screw
A bottle lid (from a 4 pint milk poly-bottle)
Some velcro (hook and eye fastener strip) from an old piece of clothing.

If any of these are not to hand, as alternatives, try:

An under-arm deodorant ball roller for the eye (take care hack sawing it in half, they are strong)
An old handbag or laptop bag strap (check with owner first!) leather is best
A buckle instead of velcro (from the bag strap or watch strap)

And that is it, so easy really, you will find the following equipment useful:
Pencil
Permanent Marker
Craft knife (or scalpel)
Glue Gun (or very rapid two part epoxy)
Scissors
Gold paint (or gold nail varnish or spray or rub n' buff)
Blue and white paint (or felt tip pens) (you will need white if you use a deodorant ball)

Step 2: Cut a Big Hole in the Lid

The lid is made of low density polyethylene (LDPE) so should be easy to cut and get a nice clean edge using a sharp craft knife. (be careful it's small and you could easily slip and cut your fingers). Most caps have alittle rim in the inside to help with the sealing, it's probably easiest if you cut up to this rim.

To get a nice even cut don't aim to cut the hole out all in one go, cut nearly to the edge and then carve away at the hole carefully making the hole nice and even.

You could even finish off the hole with fine sandpaper (or a file) to make it nice and smooth, but if you do this, don't smooth the top of the lid with the sandpaper and you will only scratch it up. (If you are careful with the knife you will not need to do this)

Step 3: Cut the Table Tennis Ball in Half

Just be careful of your fingers.

If you do not have a table tennis ball and you are using the underarm deodorant then take extreme care when cutting it. The ball is slightly smaller and is reasonably hard and slippery. It's easy to get them out of the bottle (do it with a blunt knife). Prise the ball holder out of the bottle first, then pop the ball out. Use a hack saw (NOT a knife) to cut the ball in half and hold the ball in a vice to do this, do not hold it with your fingers unless you have a very steady grip.

Step 4: Draw Line Round Tabel Tennis Ball to Fit in Cap

Put the table tennis ball half in to the cap and using a sharp pencil (for accuracy) draw a line round the table tennis ball so that you can cut it to fit the cap.

Take the ball out of the cap and cut to the line using scissors

Step 5: Layout the Main Components

As you can see I used a watch strap. The watch I had was an old one where a fat piece of strap went under the watch and was secured to main strap by two short bolt like screws. I'm going to use most of the strap.

You might not have the same stuff, so all you need to be aware of is that you need something softish next to your skin, and the eye assembly and the sraps need to be attached to something.

Even if you are using a long strap that is big enough to go round your head (say a handbag strap or belt) it can't all be in one piece because Moody's Mad Eye has straps that go off at different angles.

Knowing that and what you have to hand I'm sure you can work something out. Other things you could use are:

For the strap:
handbag strap, belt, dark neck tie, elastic from a pair of shorts, fabric, strip of leather from an old leather coat etc etc

Anyway, whatever you have lay it out so that the straps go off at an angle as if it were a clock at between 10 and 5 to 3 o'clock. and draw round the straps and the lid with a permanent marker. draw the lid curve on the ends of the straps too. (BTW, I cut off the watch buckle and did not use it)

For the eye assembly backing:
piece of felt, piece of thick fabric, piece of foam from a washing up sponge, piece of leather handbag etc etc.

Step 6: Cut Out the Leather Strap Parts

Cut them using scissors (the best way to cut leather, safer and neater than a craft knife) (also trim the straps at the EYE END, ie with a slight curve as you marked previously, and in this case cut off the buckle.

Now offer the pieces up together again and trim off any parts that look messy or don't quite fit.

Check that you have a nice angle between the two strap parts.

Do NOT glue it together yet.

Step 7: Paint Eye Retaining Ring (lid)

either spray or hand paint the ring gold. I didn't have any gold spray handy, and by now it was 11pm at night, so I sprayed mine dark brown and then over sprayed lightly with light brown and then covered it in gold finger gold rubbing paste.

Anyway I'm sure you get the picture, it needs to be gold! ( i forgot to take a picture so this a s digitally sprayed version of this step)

Step 8: Paint the Iris and Pupil

OMG, freaky I hear you say, scary even. 1 minute ago this was half a table tennis ball, now it's a wierd eye looking up at me... ooooo, anyway, to make it look good paint a light blue acrylic circle take care to make it nice and evenly round, then when that has dried (about 5 mins) lightly paint on some white acrylic lines radiating out from the centre (makes it look like an iris), but not all the way to the edge and then lastly paint or permanent marker on the pupil. If you mess it up, you can paint over it (that's the beauty of using acrylic.

If you want perfection, then you could cut a mask from some paper and spray the eye on, but you would still need to brush on the iris features.

DON'T make the iris and pupil in the centre of the eye, Mad Eye Moody's eye was always spinning round looking everywhere but straight ahead, so make it slightly off centre.

Step 9: Glue the Strap Assembly Together and Colour in the Cut Edges

Using permanent marker, colour in the cut edges of the leather black.

Offer the eye and ring up to the leather and glue the straps in place, but don't glue the ring and eye on yet. Only for the reason that it is too tricky to glue everything on at the same time and not burn your fingers on the glue gun glue.

Step 10: Assemble the Main Eye Section

11.20pm, how exciting, glue gun glue the eye ring (make sure eye is inside) on to the leather and, hey presto it's starting to look like the real thing.

Can you believe it, looks cool huh?

Step 11: Make the Strap

Ok now we need to make the rest of the strap. Depending on how you have chosen to do this. I didn't have any long straps to hand, so I used an old bit of fabric. I cut this in a long strip (big enough to go round my head) and about twice as wide as the leather straps I had used.

Now if you have a sewing machine, you could run this up in about 1 minute. But it was late and I couldn't be faffed with getting that out, so I glue gun glued the fabic. I folded one half over and then the other over so that the cut seam was down the inside and glue them over each other to make a sort of tube. Glue gun glue really sticks fabric well, but you could use other glues or an iron on patch, or if you don't mind fraying, just cut the material to the correct width.

You could also use felt. (what every you use make sure that it is dark brown or or black.

Step 12: Cut the Leather Strap to Fit

Because I made a sort of tube for my "round head strap" I thought it would be neat to cut the end of the leather straps so that I could glue the fabric round them and the join would be strong. As this part differs so much depending on what you have to hand, I'll let you work out how to make you neatest join here.

Step 13: Get the Length Right

Once the straps were all joined up at both ends, I cut them roughly in the middle and wrapped them round my head (yes those are my hand and my head). Put the Mad Eye on and pull the straps as tight as you want them so that you can feel the overlap.

Holding the overlap between thumb and forefinger and being careful not to let it slip, slide the eye off you head and mark across both strap ends, where they should be overlapping for a good fit. Trim the ends of the straps to about 2.5cm (1 inch) past the line you have drawn and make a neat end. If you used the fabric method I did you might like to finish off the end with a dab from the glue gun.

Step 14: Glue Velcro in Place

Mad Eye Moody probably uses some form of charm to keep his eye in place (although he did have a strap in the film), but being a mere muggle, I had to resort once again to the old muggle magic, Velcro.

Step 15: Finishing Touch Button

Now you know exactly how it fits and which way round it all is, it's time to put the last finishing touch on it, the small button or catch at the top (at the position of about 10 past 12 on the ring).

The button I used was the screw bolt from the original watch strap, but you could use anything small and metal. I small screw and small electrical screw headed bolt, even a bit of bent over coat hanger wire sprayed gold.

So that it has something solid to glue it to, make a small hole in the ring with a sharp pointed knife. This doesn't have to fit the shaft of the screw / bolt, just act as a key for the glue gun (hot melt) glue.

Then just glue gun glue the bolt in place. If you are using a screw, cut it to length using a pair of pliers or a hacksaw first.

Step 16: Wear the Mad Eye

And make everyone call you Mad Eye, look through walls and generally scare old people who have never heard of Harry Potter or any of his erstwhile friends!

If you like this project and want to make more wizarding stuff or loads of other projects made from household junk, then why not go to my site dadcando.

Also if you make one of these, please please, post an image here, it would be great to see how mad you are.

Lastly, if you like this poster and would like to know how you too could put yourself in the picture, then look out for my instructable on how to do just that, which will be up on line very very soon.