Kooky Spooky Eye Plant

Have you ever looked at carnivorous plants and thought "these are so boring, why are they only made up of mouth?" Me neither, but there is a point to be made about how funny it would be to see other facial organs represented in plant-form, so here we are!

As usual when it comes to my projects, there is a decent amount of reuse or repurposing in this project. It's a great way to use up old punctured ping-pong balls, foam from packaging, wire hangers, and maybe even some fake plants or flower pots that have seen better days.

Materials:

Chestnut husks

Ping-pong balls or Halloween-store lightweight plastic eyes

Colored pencils or watercolor pencils

Sticky tape roll (optional)

Marker cap (optional)

Spray Lacquer

Rubber bands

Acrylic paint in black, brown, green (optional)

Thick metal Wire (reusing wire hangers from the dry cleaners is a great option)

Greenish Spray Paint

Plant pot

Floral foam or styrofoam

Moss (optional)

Fake greenery (optional)

Pencil

Plastic wrap or a plastic bag

Tools:

Hot glue gun

Pliers/Metal wire cutters

Craft blade

My army of minions (a.k.a. the schoolchildren I have Halloween prop workshops with every year) gladly took a stroll over to the local chestnut trees to pick a full plastic bag of husks to choose from, as well as some moss. Aim for the larger husks when picking them off the ground. Chestnut husks can curl up a bit when they dry out, so after picking a bunch of the most promising looking ones out from the bunch, I let them dry around my ping-pong balls/plastic eyeballs with the help of some rubber bands.

The Dollarstore here sometimes sell these super lightweight eyeballs around Halloween-time. They kind of feel like ping-pong balls, only slightly different in the plastic. They are also a hair smaller than a ping-pong ball, which came in clutch. If you have a mutant chestnut tree producing giant husks, then feel free to use ping-pong balls only, but I found that even the largest husks were very tricky to fit around real ping-pong balls. In the end, I made 2 ping-pong eyes, and 4 Dollarstore plastic eyeball eyes.

If you want to repaint the Dollarstore eyeballs like I did, I found that the easiest method to remove the existing print on them was to just use a blade and liiightly scrape. It came right off with some swipes. You can actually use the same method on ping-pong balls if you ever want to remove that logo stamp they all have. I do not recommend trying to use any chemical to remove the paint.

You don't have to paint eyes if you happen upon these prepainted kinds, but if you'd like to, here's how!

The best way to stabilize the eye while working on it in my experience is to just plop it into the center of a spare sticky tape roll. I covered mine in some painter's tape just to protect it from the spray lacquer later on.

With your ball stabilized, you can use the cap of a marker of an appropriate size to trace around with a pencil for a perfectly circular iris in a flash. With your colored pencils, make a starburst of whatever base colors you'd like the eye to have. Then add a black, smaller circle in the middle to mark out the pupil (you can vary the size of it for some fun diversity). Then, start darkening the outside edge of the iris with short strokes pointing inwards towards the center. I recommend using a color that fits whatever color you choose for the iris, rather than straight up black. So, if you're making a green eye, a very dark green in combination with some gray is better. You can always add a touch of black at the end to darken it further.

Now, even if you're planning on an eye to appear one color, some variation really enhances the look, so don't be afraid to use some light strokes of blue in your gray eye, some yellow or green in your brown eyes, etc. You want to start layering the pigment of the iris to have some dimension. Remember to always work with a starburst in mind. Looking at some real photos of eyes as reference is a great help. A big portion of my collection of Halloween prop eyeballs are made after photos of my friends' and family's eyes, in fact.

When you feel as if your eyeball can't really accept more pigment from your pencil, it's time to lacquer it. This will give you a "new" surface to draw on that will accept further pigment. Ideally, a matte lacquer would be used for this step, and then a glossy one for final touches. This is because the surface can become too glossy and smooth, to a point where pigment won't dispense from the pencil anymore. The best move is to lacquer as seldom as possible, and as lightly as possible each time.

Add whatever final touches you want. I like to darken the pupil and limbal ring further, adding an area around the pupil of a slightly grayer & darker version of your iris color. Adding some blood vessels by just squiggling a very sharpened red colored pencil as randomly as possible on the side or back of the eye moving towards the iris is a nice detail too. Spray your final glossy coat, and let sit for the required amount of time on the lacquer's label.

Now that the husks are dry, try puzzling some of them together to form an eyelid around each eye. I started with one husk on top for an upper eyelid, one on the bottom for a bottom eyelid, and then rummaged through the husks to find one that slotted as nicely as possible between the 2. Some very careful trimming can be done with a craft blade to make it fit.

Rubber band your selected husks in the formation you want on the eyeballs, and heat up your glue gun. The rubber bands holding it all in place will help slightly with the frustration over not being born with 3 hands at our crafting disposal, but you can always use your army of minions to help hold if you have one! Sometimes, it's easier to glue together 2 out of the 3 husks you plan to use, and then pop the eyeball in before gluing the last one.

Aim to glue the husks together, not the husks to the eyeball, as plastic can melt with the direct heat of the glue. I had no problems with this, but I cannot guarantee what exact plastic your eyes are or the temperature of your glue gun!

Cut some lengths of thick wire, about the length of how tall you want your plant to be, but take into account the height of the plant pot and the fact that some extra wire will be needed for the squiggles of the plant stem.

Bend the wire with pliers like in the picture diagram to get a nice centered "anchor" that can be glued to the back of the chestnut eye, then bend the wire stem into any squiggly, natural, organic shape you feel like. You can kind of give the eyes different personalities depending on how you position them, and that's the beauty of it! You can make some additional bends later when arranging them in the pot, but depending on the thickness and strength of your wire, you don't want to end up accidentally crushing the chestnut eye in the effort to try and bend the wire to your liking after you've affixed it.

Glue the wire anchor to the back of your chestnut eye. Don't worry if it doesn't look pretty. We can cover it up with some paint later.

with your eye plant stems bent, glued, and ready, cover the chestnut eye with some plastic wrap or a plastic bag to protect it, and give the stems a spray paint job with a nice green color. You'll need to get every angle of the wire, so make sure you are spraying in a space where you can't accidentally get overspray on important stuff.

If you want to hide the wire anchor on the back of the chestnut eye, or if your glue-gunning got a little too enthusiastic and you'd like to hide the gloops of glue, you can do so fairly easily with some acrylic paint. Start with a coat of pure black for best coverage, and then add some browns to match the husks afterwards when the black base coat is dry.

With some floral foam or styrofoam, cut it to fit into your flower pot very snugly (I hoped to find some floral foam, as it is much denser and holds things more firmly than styrofoam, but I couldn't find any in my stash, so styrofoam would have to do). Floral foam can always be carved with a normal knife, but styrofoam is most easily carved with a hot wire cutter. Insert the foam into the flower pot, and leave some room at the top.

If you (like me) only have white styrofoam, you can use some green or brown acrylic paint (NOT spray paint, as this tends to "eat" away at foam) to make it look like further greenery or soil in the pot. I covered my white spots up with bundles of moss instead. Much easier, faster, and cheaper - although a little more bug filled.

Start sticking your finished stems into the foam, placing them to have different heights and trimming the bottom of the wire if needed. I like for them to point at slightly different angles to make it seem like they are always looking at someone in the room. If you're having trouble with the stems rotating, you can bend the very end (a couple of cm/about an inch or so) of the wire stem at a 90 degree angle before inserting it. This will anchor it into the foam better.

If you have some fake greenery that you'd like to add, you can often kind of just pull the leaves off the stem they're attached to when it comes to fake flowers. There will be a little peg left where you can pop them back on later if you please. If you need the stem of your fake greenery to be longer so it can be inserted into the foam, just cut a little bit of wire and shove it up into the place where the peg used to go. Then you can just stick it in like with the eye plant stems.

If you have bald spots that you need to hide, use some (dry) moss to cover it up. Just section the rug of moss into smaller bits and pop it in between the stems.

Done! Place your plant pot on your dining table, your porch, your window, or maybe your nightstand if you enjoy being watched as you sleep!

Here my plant is placed on a side table as part of my Addams Family Photo-op during my haunt, and then in its more permanent spot in my home afterwards.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN