I’m looking to make some taxidermy-style animal eyes, and I thought I’d try painting the pupils/irises onto the back surface of clear glass or plastic hemispheres, as I’ve seen stuffed cat eyes similarly constructed. However, I’m not sure where I should look for such materials. These eyes would likely be dime-sized or smaller, if that makes a difference; and I might need a lot of them, so cheap is good too. Any suggestions?
I once made some nice-looking eyes for a stuffed animal, using polymer clay painted with acrylic paint. Crafts stores sell push-molds for making doll eyes, but it’s easy to make them without a mold. The hardest part is painting the irises.
You could possibly make your own with hot glue. Find something the shape that you want and just squirt some hot glue into it. Go slow and possibly use a pin or something to pop any bubbles that form. Once it dries you should be able to pop it out of your mold. It’s pretty hard when it dries you can probably sand and buff out any rough edges.
If you have one that you can use to make a mold of you could possibly make a mold from sculpey or go all out and buy a product specifically for making molds. You may need to use something like Pam or vaseline in the mold so your hot glue will release.
You could also make your eyes from resin. I had a few links on how to do these various things but I lost them in my computer crash. I’ve seen hot glue used by costumers to make fake jewels and other embellishments for costumes. You could probably just google for more info on mold making and using resin.