Bowl of Eye-Balls

Back in the beginning with Flamingo Toes was a baby blog and there were 11 of you reading along I made these cute little Fabric Decor Balls.

Not that I think the blog’s all grown up now. Maybe we’re in those awkward pre-teen years. ha.

One of the things that I loved about them was that they were easy to change out for different seasons. And guess what – it’s time to change them out!!
Yes. I’m fickle.

So today I’m showing off my tutorial for these super easy Eye-Balls.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own spooky set:
(Yes. I know they’re not really spooky. This is about as Halloween/spooky as we get over here.)

• plastic balls (I bought 2 packages of whiffle balls from the Dollar Store)
• white fabric for the strips (I used 108″ wide muslin I had, 24″ of it.
  So if you use regular 45″ fabric you’ll need about 1 2/3 yards)
• more white fabric – 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece
• freezer paper
• printer

I originally tried printing out the eyeballs on paper, and then wrapping them, but the paper wouldn’t lay flat and kept creasing. Not cute. And slightly frustrating.

I have been wanting to try printing on fabric for a long time – and decided this would be a perfect project to give it a go with. I had seen it done somewhere but I don’t remember where now.
I was nervous about it but it was so simple!

Start by cutting a 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of both fabric and freezer paper.

Iron the fabric onto the shiny side of the freezer paper. Press it down as flat as you can, so you don’t have any wrinkles or bubbles.

Find some eyeballs that you like. Mine came from here but I saw some cool realistic eyeballs at the Graphics Fairy this week too.

******  UPDATE: I have created a PDF with a set of Eyeballs for you!!
Click here to open the PDF  *****

Place the paper in your printer so that the fabric side will print as it runs through.
Mine went through really easily. I had a few bubbles so you can see a couple small lines in the eyes – but that was it.

Peel off your freezer paper and cut out your eyes.
You can see that it printed out pretty clearly!

For the strips to wrap the balls with, make a small slit in the bottom selvage edge of the fabric, about 1″ away from the cut edge.

Grab both sides of the slit and tear the fabric. This will give you a nice even strip and the ends will be a little frayed. Perfect for that “mummy” look.
(Your first strip might not be even if the cut edge wasn’t even. Which it probably wasn’t. Does it seem to anyone else like fabric stores don’t cut in straight lines anymore??)

Tear enough strips of your fabric to cover each ball well. I used 2 - 1″  x 108″ strips for each. So if you have 45″ fabric you’ll want 2 1/2 - 1″ x 45″ strips.
Ack. Enough with the math.

Start wrapping the ball, criss-crossing the fabric for coverage. I wrapped one strip completely before adding in the eyeball.

Lay the eye on the ball (does that make anyone else think of Runaway Bride? No? Just me then.)

Wrap the remain strip around the ball so that it covers the edge of the circle but not the pupil.

Tuck the end of the strip under one of the wrapped pieces so it holds. I did not use glue – because I’ll do something else with these for Christmas.

But if your kids (or husband) are going to chuck them around – add a spot of glue. I’ll probably regret the no-glue thing.

Wrap all your little eye-balls. I did 12.

And you’re done! Really – you can’t get much easier. No Sew. No glue. I love it!

I put all the little eyes in my bowl with some gray moss and some spiders and roaches I picked up at the Dollar Store. Just to try and up the spooky factor.

 I think they’re so cute. If you can say that a bowl of eyeballs and spiders is cute.

I’m entering this in the Halloween CSI contest!!

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