Thursday, September 13, 2018

Creature Peepers DIY with Laura Bickle



Creature Peepers
By Laura Bickle

So I love dragon eyes. And dinosaur eyes. Cat eyes…yeah. I love ‘em all. I’d been wanting to experiment a bit with some of the really cool eyes that are out there in the world of crafting.

I don’t have any resin handy, but I wanted to experiment a bit. What I did have was a bag of rocks. I was intending on decorating them somehow to use as pattern weights – stones to hold down sewing patterns as I cut out the fabric. I’d been mulling how I wanted to decorate them when I thought I’d try to paint them as creature eyes.




Here’s what you’ll need to make a fast and easy dragon eyes:

·        Black stones
·        Toothbrush
·        Black nail polish
·        Assorted brightly-colored nail polish
·        Clear coat nail polish (optional)


(Step 1)

You’ll need flat, smooth, black stones. They don’t have to be perfectly round, but they do need to be black for the shading we’ll be doing. You can find your stones outdoors or in craft stores. I got a bag for a buck from my local dollar store.

You’ll also need opaque nail polish. Black is a must for this project, but you’ll also need a couple of very bright colors. Pale colors just won’t show up as well, and sheer shades are a no-go. So put your French manicure shades away and dig out your party colors!

When you’re ready to begin, take a bright color and paint two curvy stripes, facing each other, on the center of your stone. The empty center will become the pupil of your creature eye. Use a lot of nail polish – it should be thick and gloppy!


(Step 2)

Just to the outside of those stripes, paint on another color. I chose a metallic gold. You should now have two stripes on each side of your pupil. This is the beginning of the colored iris part of the eye.

Don’t overthink any of the painting. Just move quickly – you’ll want to do the next steps while the nail polish is still wet and able to blend for best results. If you make a mistake, just wipe the stone off and start again.


(Step 3)

Using a toothbrush, swipe color from the inside of the stone outward. Work your way around the stone, pulling the color from center to the edge. Swipe each area only once, or else your color will blend, and you won’t have strong texture in the iris of the eye. Don’t scrub back and forth. Just set the brush at the beginning of the stripe and pull out.


(Step 4)


(Step 5)

Then, pick a strongly contrasting color, and squiggle it in the middle of the irises on either side of your pupil.


(Step 6)

Using the same technique with the toothbrush, pull the new color from the middle out to the edge. Start swiping with the toothbrush from the middle and pull outward. Remember not to overwork this, or you’ll wind up with an indistinct, muddy grey eye.


(Step 7)

Then, take your black nail polish and make a stripe at the very edge of each eye. This time, you’ll want to use your toothbrush to brush the black inward. Sweep the color from the outside in. Just a few quick swipes should do it.


(Step 8)

For some additional texture, I dotted some turquoise around my pupil in dribs and drabs.


(Step 9)

Let your eye dry for a bit. When it’s dry, you can sharpen and clean up the edges of your pupil with black nail polish. I also painted some black polish at the corners of the eyes, to clean the outside up. If you have white nail polish, you can drop a couple of drops in for a shine effect.


(Step 10)

Let your eye completely dry. When it’s dry, you can coat it with clear nail polish or another sealer to make it super-glossy. I didn’t have any glitter nail polish handy, but that could be super-fun at this step!

And that’s all there is to it. Creature eyeballs will now be gazing at me in my craft room when I’m cutting out patterns. Hopefully, their keen magical sight will keep me from making too many cutting errors! 


Pawned

Laura Bickle

Genre: YA Dark Fantasy

Print Length: 345 pages

Publisher: Syrenka Publishing LLC

Publication Date: September 13, 2018

ASIN: B07FZQWDF8

For fans of Stranger Things and the works of Neil Gaiman, Pawned is a Young Adult novel that blends dark fantasy adventure and noir — on the New Jersey boardwalk.

Book Description:

You can hock almost anything at my family’s pawn shop…even your own soul.

You think running a pawn shop full of cursed objects with your dad and grandpops is cool? Try it for a week and get back to me. Now try picking up any random object and seeing its creeptastic history play out right before your eyes — yup, that’s my little “gift.” It’s my job to sort out what’s haunted and hexed from what’s not, and do my best to keep all of us — including Bert, our ice-cream-truck-driving-lizard demon — employed.

So it wasn’t all sunshine, roses, and possessed samurai swords even before grandpops’ heart attack — but now things are garden-gnome levels of bad. Dad made a deal with the wrong end of the dark side to save grandpops’ life, putting my whole family smack dab between the forces of evil and our friendly local blow-your-pawn-shop-to-smithereens mobsters. And Lily next door…I shouldn’t even be thinking about Lily.

All I ever wanted was to get out of this crap town and away from my messed-up family, and instead it looks like I’m gonna have to use every scrap of magic in this joint or there won’t be any family left to leave behind…

Amazon    BN    Kobo    iTunes



About the Author:

Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology – Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs, also writing contemporary fantasy novels under the name Alayna Williams.

Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.


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