#eye replacement

[thylacines-toybox]

Restoring Treecko's eyes

This Treecko plush used to belong to a primary school friend, and unfortunately one of her dogs got hold of it at some point and tore the fabric covering its eyes. So it's just been blank eyed and ghostly for a long time, but I thought I'd try painting them back on!

These eyes feel like they are fitted like the normal type of safety eye with a washer at the back, but they're huge and I bet they'd be really tough. Rather than attempt to detach them, I decided just to mask the fur around them with tape, tucking the tape under the edge a bit. The surface of the plastic was already sanded and matte enough to paint. I put on a few thin coats to try and keep it smooth.

I lightly sketched in a pupil position then very carefully drew the pupils with a paint pen! I'm surprised I got them as neat as that.

While varnishing them, I added a circle of hole punched paper for a white highlight. This is a little off model honestly but I think it looks nice.

A few coats of varnish later (honestly not as shiny as I could have gotten, but not too bad) I removed the tape, and we're done! It looks happy!

[abhainnwhump]

Shutter Eyes

(Content warnings: Implied eye gore, stalking, creepy whumper, eye surgery)

During Whumpee's time with Whumper, they had their eyes replaced via surgery. Metal ones that were the same color as Whumper's. Uncomfortable, cold, and down right cruel, Whumpee thought it was because Whumper was just a massive creep and wanted them to look more like them. Thankfully, their team found them only days later.

Unknowing to Whumpee, Whumper installed cameras in the metal eyes. They can both see out of them and control their movement. Now Whumper could spy on their precious toy's life and all of their loved ones. :)

(I kind of want to write a full scene for this one. The surgery that is.)

[screechingpersimmon]

I have apoxie sculpt and will be actually sculpting on some extra top eyelid to fix the staring problem, but since MGA handles it by painting the tops if the factory eyes black, I wanted to give painting her new eyes a try.

And honestly? I think it looks pretty good! If you don’t have a good air dry clay option or are concerned about your sculpting ability, I think this is a great option. If I didn’t want to give her outrageous lashes I’d probably stop here.

[desertdollranch]

Eye swapping a vinyl doll with inset eyes

Nahji is my 14-inch Hearts for Hearts Girls doll. She was a thrift store rescue that my sister gifted to me earlier this month, and arrived looking very well loved, with messy hair and dirt in all her joints. Her eyes had turned from brown to purple, a defect that seems to be common in dolls with inset acrylic eyes when poor-quality materials are used. At first I thought her purple eyes were indeed quite pretty, but ultimately after looking at other Nahji dolls with original eyes, decided I wanted brown eyes for her after all.

Swapping them for the new eyes was easy and inexpensive; I paid $3.50 for this pair of eyes on an Etsy shop called Felicity Garden. These were sold as Wellie Wisher eyes, but luckily they share the same eye size (16 millimeters) as Hearts for Hearts Girls. Taking out the old ones and putting in the new ones was a far easier process than removing and replacing sleep eyes commonly used in 18 inch dolls. This is also a method that can be used with Wellie Wishers, who also have inset acrylic eyes and can in rare cases also develop purple eyes. 

Behind the cut, I’ll explain how I did it. 

A quick note about Wellie Wishers: while you CAN use this method for them, if your doll’s eyes have turned purple, you don’t NEED to replace the eyes yourself if you don’t want to. American Girl considers this a defect and will replace your entire doll for you at no cost. I know this because my mother bought a secondhand Kendall doll who had eyes turning purple, and customer service was happy to provide her with a new one. They even paid for the shipping to send the defective one back. Just give the doll hospital a call and explain the situation.

But if you want to eye swap your Wellie Wisher to give it a new eye color, or are particularly attached to your specific Wellie and don’t want to trade them in for a different doll, then I recommend the shop I linked above for new eyes. Or you can search Etsy for other sellers of Wellie eyes; but remember that they must be 16 millimeters in length. If you have another brand of doll and you’re not sure of the eye size, measure from corner to corner of the eye socket for the correct length.

On Friday, the eyes arrived.  

Jeepers creepers! 

And I immediately began the process by first removing all of Nahji’s clothes and jewelry, and then heating up a pot of water on the stove. As soon as it was boiling, I prepared her. 

Not to worry, she’s fine. This will protect her from the hot water.

Then I inverted her into the hot water, making sure that her face was completely covered, and held her there for about a minute. Just long enough to get the vinyl heated up so that it would be soft and flexible.

It’s really important that the water is hot enough! If it’s not, the vinyl won’t stretch enough to get the eyes out. I experimented with heat levels during the process, going from lower to higher; I found that only water at boiling temperatures made the vinyl stretchy enough. If you wait too long and let it cool, you won’t be able to remove the eyes. So what you can do is let the water come to a full boil, then turn off the heat and immediately insert the doll into the pot. 

Once her head was warm and pliable, I was able to squeeze her head and make her eye sockets open up until her eyes could be carefully plucked out. 

This might be easy, and it might be challenging. I struggled with the first eye but the second one came right out without help.

I made sure the insides of her eye sockets were completely dry. 

Then I reheated my water and dunked her in again with the bag over her head to reheat the vinyl. 

The eyes went in. This takes a bit of careful maneuvering; be patient and keep trying, reheating the vinyl if necessary. 

You might notice that I filed the pointy sides down a bit; this isn’t something that HAS to be done, but it made things a tad bit easier pushing them into the sockets. 

And that was it! 

At some angles the eyes look slightly uneven, but this seems to be an issue with her eye sockets themselves, as her original eyes were also slightly unbalanced. It doesn’t bother me, though. I think she looks lovely. 

[thylacines-toybox]

Praline (they/it)

A bat from the Keel Toys eco range, bought from the local garden centre before work yesterday morning. It originally had embroidered eyes that didn’t really suit a bat, so I replaced them with beady ones. Also gave it a wing ring made from a bit of ribbon!

Here were the original eyes. This embroidered style is cute sometimes but… could be more batty! I decided to try replacing them with safety eyes.

The cat in the background was waiting her turn.

‘This will be simple,’ I thought, ‘just like unpicking the patch from a Build-a-Bear, I will simply pick through all the threads and gradually pull them out.’

It turned out to be harder than that! There’s a lot of layers of thread to pick through, and the cut threads wouldn’t budge. I opened up the bat, turned the head inside out and tried picking at the other side too. That did loosen them, and I made some progress pulling them out, but…

Aaah! I’d torn a great big hole around the eye! Abort! Abort!

Change of plan! I cut out both eyes entirely.

Now I just have one spare eye like this btw. I should patch this onto something funny.

I ladder stitched both the holes closed. These holes are a significant size, so closing them up did have a noticeable effect on the face shape.

Luckily, the effect in this case was pretty good! Bats should have a pretty scrunchy little face anyway!

I popped a 7.5mm eye in a gap between my stitches to see. Aw yes, this works well! I fixed it in place, did the other eye, restuffed and sewed the back seam closed again.

One more thing to do… one of the feet was a bit blobbier looking than the other. A row of ladder stitching would sort that.

Lacing up the boot.

And pull! Now it matches the pointy toe of the other foot.

Bat salvaged! Didn’t go as planned but I got a good result in the end!

I was watching Fantasia while I did this.

[thylacines-toybox]

Do you know how to hide messy stitches? This is Mandy and I screwed up a bit stitching her old eyeholes shut.

Oh dear, it looks like the very short fur there made it hard to disguise them as much. Aside from just doing your best and neatest possible ladder stitching, brushing at the area with a toothbrush can help to free trapped fibres and fuzz it up a little (like a wire brush with longer fur). I’m not sure you’ll be able to hide them completely though…

But actually, it sorta looks like some eyebrows and it’s kinda cute! Like a kinda shy or puzzled expression! Maybe lean into it, and try embroidering some actual eyebrows to disguise the stitches or draw your eye away from them a bit?

Alternatively…….. headband!

[thylacines-toybox]

Hello; I saw your beanie eye post, I was wondering if that process is how you'd recommend replacing eyes that have been forceably removed also. (My dog got ahold of my monkey plush, didn't leave a single tear in the fabric, but absolutely did rip his eyes off.) And could you use eyes off of something else that you don't care about?

Poor monkey! Yes, replacing his eyes will work just the same way. Good thing the fabric didn’t tear, but it may still be a good idea to reinforce the eye holes with a little ladder stitching to make sure the hole left is very small and the new eyes will hold on as tightly as they can!

You might be able to reuse eyes from something else, but it’s often hard to remove the plastic washer in a way that it can be used again, not all kinds can be cut neatly! So you might be better off just buying new eyes - search for safety eyes with the same diameter and colour and see if you find a good match.

[screechingpersimmon]

The eye operation was a success but the patient is a little off