Eye am watching you

[lovetocreate]

I am new on this forum, but have been making various leather items for about 3 years.  Here are a leather purse and wallet with hand painted glass eyes. 

[alpha2]

That's different! Nice work...I am pretty sure I saw it blink.

[Grey Drakkon]

Those are awesome, and fantastic painting job!

[Mjolnir]

There was a recent thread about this technique of creasing and sculpting the leather. Can you describe your method?

 

[DV8DUG]

1 hour ago, Mjolnir said:

There was a recent thread about this technique of creasing and sculpting the leather. Can you describe your method?

 

What he asked and how does the painting for the eye work?

[lovetocreate]

Thank you for the compliments!  

The eye was reverse painted on a 1" glass cabochon.  The painted is applied to the flat back side in layers, with the black pupil being painted first.  Then various layers of color are added for the iris.

As far as the creased, sculpted leather, here's how I do it.  I use a thin  piece of leather as a base, then apply a light coating of barge cement to both the eye and leather, and glue the eye to the base piece.  I then cut a slit  and little smaller than the width of  the eye in the "skin" leather.  I fold the leather back to form and upper and lower eyelid, then basically shape and  fold the the leather to create the creases.  When I am happy with the look, I  use just enough barge cement on both the base layer and skin, to hold the shape, being careful not to get glue in the area where I'll be stitching.  I added some stuffing around the eye (in the purse) to create a brow bone and check protrusion.  Again adding a little cement to hold the leather in place.   The eye piece is then sewn down to a piece of stabilizer and the surrounding leather is put on top and sewn, then trimmed.  (This is known as reverse applique).  Sorry if this is clear as mud, it's fairly easy to do, but hard for me to explain.  A point to bring up is that the "skin" leather is a thin leather, so it is fairly easy easy to shape and stitch.  

 

[bikermutt07]

That is some nifty stuff.

[JMixx]

Do you sell your work?  I have a friend who is absolutely bananas over dragons.  I thought she had every dragon-shaped home decor and accessory that was possible, but not any more!  Do you think it would be possible to cut the purse sides into dragon profiles instead of rectangles? (Even if not, I'm pretty sure she would LOVE a dragon-esque eye looking out of her purse...)

Um, in case you can't tell, I think you're very creative and a talented artist.  I don't know very much about leather-working, but I know a little more about painting.