Creepy eye following portrait for Halloween
A simple but creepy DIY project to add a special effect to your Halloween décor. Making the eyes concave gives the illusion that the eyes are following you.
What you need:
- Large portrait (I had mine printed at Walgreens on 16×20 poster)
- Foam board (purchased at Michael’s)
- Adhesive spray https://amzn.to/2I4Ezux
- Regular Gel Gloss to paint over poster https://amzn.to/2LqNfgK
- Vintage looking frame https://amzn.to/2I1Vqy9
- Halloween plastic eye props (hollow backs) https://amzn.to/2AccWLM
How to:
Attach image to foam board with spray adhesive (purchased at Michael’s)
Apply regular gel gloss with flat paint brush over entire portrait to give the appearance of an original painting.
Take two of the eye props and remove the iris of each. I used a knife to slowly work around the iris prying and cutting a little at the edge around the iris until I could pry the iris off the front of the eye prop. Turn the eye around to hollow side (concave side), glued iris directly into middle of the hollow eye prop.
Once paint on image is completely dry, cut off excess foam board then use knife or some other tool to cut out eyes of image using the eye props as a guide for cut. You want the hole to be just a little bit smaller than the eye prop. Be patient with this process. Working on the proper size of cuts was more work than any part of the project. As you can see from my video, I still didn’t achieve a clean cut, but decided it was good enough for my first attempt at this project.
Carefully position the concave eyes behind the eye holes and secure with tape. Or, once you have the perfect placement of eyes you can glue them on the foam board.
Remove glass or plexiglass from frame (you don’t need this for this project, but you can save the glass to create a pepper’s ghost effect prop…DIY post for that coming soon)
Optional…I taped small string of lights around the eyes to give them a glowing effect. You don’t need the lights to get the following effect, but the lights really help to highlight the illusion. String lights: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G91W6PA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Place portrait on a shelf or mantel where guests frequently walk by, or hang on a wall with wire so that there is space between eye props and wall.
Happy Haunting