Renata Jansen - Painting and Sculpting

I've discovered a method to make 'glass' eyes that works for me, here is what I do….. I use……21 guage wire Wire cutters Fimo gel Size 12mm knitting needle Fimo classic white (later…coloured fimo, a size 0000 brush and bronze powder)
Cut lengths of wire for each eye..I like wire that's thin enough so I can bend the eyes to line them up in the face….. make a loop at the top of each piece of wire so that the clay will not come off the wire after it is cured. I like to make a lot at a time so that I can choose the best to use….
make a small ball of clay on top of each wire (small enough so that your eyes do not become to big later on) indent each using the tip of the knitting needle…I stand my wires up in an old bit of clay. Bake this for just enough time to harden the clay 'eyes'
Once this is cool take a slightly larger piece of clay for each eye and roll this into a ball and flatten it….place this over the smaller ball you have just baked. Make another indent in each, with the knitting needle.
Take a small roll of coloured fimo clay and cut into small sections of the same size for each eye….roll each in your fingers to create as accurate a circle as possible….put one in each indent and press gently with the needle to flatten.
Repeat this process with a slightly smaller ball of clay…a slightly lighter colour than the last…make sure that a little bit of the darker clay circle underneath still shows…if the lighter ball is slightly small than the darker was then this should be easy.
Brush each 'iris' gently with bronze powder or anything you may have to add a shimmer…or leave them plain if you prefer…bake this again for just a few minutes to harden.
Make the pupils with even smaller balls of black fimo…I manage to get these small enough by splitting an already small ball of clay again on my finger….make sure your little pieces are circular!…put these gently onto the irises and press using the knitting needle as before…you may want to brush a very small amount of fimo gel onto the iris first so that the pupil sticks better.
Squeeze drops of fimo gel into each indent on each eye. Remove all bubbles with a small brush…you may want to leave them for a while to settle so you can make sure you have removed all the bubbles.
Bake them again…this time start the oven off on its lowest setting…don't use a convection oven for this…the circulating air will blow your lense off!….once they have baked on the lowest temperature for about 10 minutes..turn the heat up by about 10 degrees every 10 minutes after that until you reach 130 degrees celcius…leave it there for about 10 to 15 minutes to clear up the lenses. If you start the baking off with a hot oven the lenses will tend to get a lot of bubbles.
As you can see you will generally find that a few stray bubbles have been missed in some of the eyes(or maybe that's just me!) ….that is why I make many of the same colour so that I can choose 2 of the best. Here is the clear lense!
You can also shave off extra white clay from underneath using an exacto knife
This is what they look like in a face!….well the beginnings of a face!
When the eyes are in a face they will become misty while you are working on it…..they can be easily made clear again by brushing with a little bit of baby oil and when you are finished your faerie and have cured and painted her you can bring out the clarity once again with a thin layer of gloss varnish!
Here is my faerie face made with these eyes…I did change her skin tone to one slightly darker….