Around September/October I had this idea, but the execution was of course a bit more complex than I had thought of beforehand 😅 My sweet uncle and aunt gave me several mini preserving jars for my hobby. They know I like to use glass. Now the glass of such a preserving jar is slightly thicker, so that the image can become somewhat distorted, so it had to be something that would work with a little distortion. Something in a liquid seemed appropriate. And with Halloween coming up, it made me think of ingredients for a witch's brew. Now I also wanted to make an ikat cane and that's how I came up with eyes. Ikat is a technique in which colors seem to be woven together. Usually contrasting colors are used for this, but because I made the irises of the eyes with them, I used ton sur ton. This gives you a slightly striped color gradient, which makes the irises more expressive. And of course I wanted to make it even more complicated 😉 The eyeballs should have clear veins of polymer clay. I didn't want to draw or paint veins on it after baking. That's why I drew up a vein pattern, my partner made a 3d print of it. I can use that to get sections in the clay that I fill with a different color (in this case red and neon yellow), making a 'vein' cane. For this project the veins are relatively thick, I wanted to make them stand out clearly, the eyes didn't have to be 'too' realistic, it's a Halloween scene and not a horror movie 😂 But by filling the slots with thin slices of colour, you can also create a very fine vein. I also added two simple 'demon' eyes, with no colour gradient. I also put my stamp in the pupil of one of those eyes, but after filling the jar with epoxy resin, it is almost impossible to see. Since polymer clay is porous, all eyes had to be sanded and varnished first, which was quite a job. You do this to prevent small gas bubbles from forming in the resin around the eyes. There are some small air bubbles in the end result, but fortunately not too much around the eyes. What started as a small project eventually took quite some time 😅
The preserving jar is made of glass, all eyes are completely made of Fimo (polymer clay) and it is cast in epoxy resin. The scene has a diameter of 6.8 cm and a height of 5.4 cm.
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