DIY Dragon Eye Brooch From Polymer Clay

One day, my friend asked for a dragon eye pendant for her birthday. I didn't think I've even seen such pendants before. So - I googled examples and tried to make something similar. Sculpting dragon eyes turned out to be... fun! Since then I have made hundreds of dragon eyes, pendants and brooches. And now I want to share my experience with you.

• Polymer Clay (Oven baked, but you can use other types of clay too) in your favorite color. For the first time I recommend white, or light color.
• Round metal base for brooch
• Clear glass cabochon
• Metal foil
• Stained glass paints (the preferred color of the iris of the dragon's eye. If you don't know which one to choose, use yellow)
• Acrylic paint (black paint and metallic)
• Hobby knife, nail scissors
• Other tools: roller, nail dotting tools, wire ferrules (anything to create texture)
• Paint brush
• White plasticine
• Paper napkins

First you have to make a few choices.

1. The size of the brooch. The eye will be slightly larger than the base for the brooch.

2. The size of the eye itself. Choose a cabochon so that it looks cozy in the base for the brooch.

3. Decide on the color of the dragon's skin and eyes. I recommend to start sculpting from white clay. White shows the texture better. And it can be easily painted any color.

The iris can be any color you want. But light colors look best. My favorites are yellow, orange and light green.

4. If you are not sure you can just sculpt an eye from scratch, draw a sketch first. Nothing special, Eye, pupil, eyelids.

We start by painting the cabochon. This will take time, as we will have to wait for the paint to dry completely.

It is convenient to paint a cabochon by sticking it on a strip of plasticine. White, to see what we are drawing. I use wax plasticine, it leaves less greasy traces than other types.

The first photo shows all the stages of painting:

1. press the cabochon into the plasticine with the flat side up

2. draw the pupil with black acrylic

3. after the pupil has dried, paint the iris

Рaint the cabochon with stained glass paints. The paint needs to be transparent. Of the paints I have tried, Marabu GlasArt behaves best (the only negative is the strong smell). Before using a cabochon, I recommend heating it in an oven at the baking temperature of polymer clay. Some paints change color, or even boil. If you don't like the result, it's easy to scrape off the paint and try again. That's why I love glass cabochons so much.

The method is also suitable for creating eyes from acrylic or epoxy cabochons. They just can't be baked in the oven.

4.After the paint has completely dried, to create a reflective effect, glue the eyes onto crumpled foil. It can be smooth, and the foil also has two sides, glossy and duller, so there are options. I use instant super glue gel Moment.

Now we have eyes and a base. I use three main methods to sculpt eyes, which I will explain here.

Method one, "Pinch". Stick a large piece of clay on the base. Рress the cabochon into the middle, and form the eyelids. The eye is easily shaped by pinching the corners of the eyes, hence the name.

The second method, "Layers" Fill the base with a thin layer of clay, then apply eyelids from the rolled layers. I cut off the excess clay with nail scissors.

The third method, "Sausages", is essentially a middle ground between the second and the first. The main shape of the eye is formed at the beginning (look at the general photo, I'm sorry, but I forgot to take an intermediate photo), but we do not pinch the eyelid, it is molded with clay sausages of different thicknesses.

I had cases of the brooch falling out of the base, in order to avoid this, you need to "hug" the edges of the brooch with clay. It also helps not to remove the clay squeezed into the holes on the clasp, but to flatten it to create a lock.

Now the fun part - applying texture.

Here are my basic tools, a set of nail dotting tools and wire ferrules. I also often use my favorite dental tool when sculpting, it looks like a hockey stick. It is very convenient to apply parallel notches.

1.The yellow eye's texture is applied with nail dotting tools. If you press lightly, you get a crumpled surface, if you press hard, more spongy.

2.The green eye's scaly texture is applied with wire ferrules. I usually change the diameter of the tube according to the principle the closer to the eye, the smaller.

3.The red eye's texture combines methods 2 and 3.

Now you can further decorate the eye, add bone growths, additional scales, leaves, tentacles, rhinestones... to your taste. Or leave it as is (third eye)

There are many ways to paint clay. Powders and enamels should be used to tint unbaked clay. Acrylic paint can be used before and after baking. There are a lot of tricks here, we will not go deep so as not to overload this instruction. Specifically, these eyes were painted with acrylic after baking.

The first (yellow) eye is painted using the blackening method. The brooch is covered with black paint, then the paint is wiped off with a napkin, leaving what remains in the recesses of the texture.

The second (green) eye is painted using the tinting method. Pass with a dry brush with a small amount of paint (or you can use your finger) along the protruding parts of the texture. On white clay, tinting with black paint creates a burnt effect (it looks especially funny on animal muzzles).

The third (red) eye is painted with both methods - blackening with black paint and tinting with gold metallic.

The great thing about dragons is that science still doesn't have an exact description of them, so the eye you make can look like anything. Any color, any size, in scales, in rhinestones, woolen. You are the creator, everything is possible.