Eyeball Flowers & Textured Vases

I've been making a conscious effort not to give into the commercialism of Halloween and I just don't need more stuff.

I did fantasize about doing a minimalist home display that would involve a giant clown I saw looming menacingly at the Spirit store and a bunch of helium filled red balloons staked all over the yard. But I really don't want a clown that would spend most of the year hiding in my basement.

There was this clown too, my daughter jokingly asked if it was a Roomba.  It's a good thing it isn't otherwise I would be tempted to buy one for every room in the house, so I could have a complete fleet of creepy cleaning clowns.  Which would result in the kids needing therapy, an end to my marriage and my never being able to fall asleep again.

Anyway Halloween is almost at an end, and all I bought was a baby octopus skeleton (Come on, it's not even humanly possible to resist that.) and some black flowers from Target.  And from their landfill fodder bins that I normally walk right past, at that.

Eyeball flowers seem to be trending this season, they are even selling them at the local grocery store, but most of them look pretty lame.

The Target flowers caught my eye because of their wonderful eyelash potential. The flowers themselves have a nice velvety texture.

Making eyeballs that don't look lame is actually really easy.  I used glass gems, the kind they sell as vase fillers.  Make sure you get clear ones without an iridescent finish.  Then simply mod podge an iris image onto the flat side.  I love these from Orestes Graphics.  I highlighted the lashes before gluing the eyes in, painters tape helped keep the petals out of the way.


The vases are Method bottles that have been revamped from a previous project.

Even if I can't appreciate the look, I do sympathize with people who can't help but bedazzle everything in sight. I want to add textures and paint to everything,  it's a sickness.

On the small center vase I used textured tinfoil, I have information on that process here.  The  larger vases are textured using the following technique:

First a layer of tissue paper to give everything something to stick to, then sewing thread randomly wrapped around.  I used mesh tape (for drywall repair) to keep the thread from slipping.  I like the mesh tape because it has it's own interesting texture so if you don't completely hide it, it doesn't matter.  

Trying not to move the thread, gently apply texture paste (paint/gesso, joint compound/spackle, glue/mod podge) randomly over the bottle.  

Then stretch out spider webbing over the texture paste.

This a sample piece, the black and white contrast shows the texture a little better.  I really love this effect.

This is some trim from an old shirt of my daughter.

And this is what it looks like on a bottle.  Below is how it looks with paint which consists of a base coat of black followed by sponging on DecoArt Dazzling Metallics* in Renaissance Brown, Festive Green, Teal and Champagne Gold.

*I'm only name dropping products, because I really like their line of metallics compared to others I have used.