Tyra Smith, Cloud 9, Tips & Techniques

Eyeglass Blanks

Kay Osborne KayO@peoplepc.com
Myrna posted her discovery that eyeglass blanks could be stamped on and distorted with heat. I have a friend who works in an optometry clinic and she's been saving blanks for me ever since. So, to thank her, I made a Christmas tree for the office using some of the blanks.

Here are my steps...(yep, I know I was playing with some dangerous chemicals)

- cleaned the printing off the blanks with mineral spirits
- drilled holes in them
- put them in a big box lid and sprayed them with denatured alcohol - dropped tiny drops of Tria inks on them - sprayed them with more denatured alcohol to make the ink spread - distorted them with a heat gun - painted over the inked surface with Xylene-based gold leaf paint
- created little hangers with copper wire - hung them on a spiral tree
I created with copper tubing - hung glass beads using copper wire

I didn't want to glitz it up too much because, since it's going to be in an optometrist's office, I wanted it to be evident it was created with *lenses*.

I tried to heat the tubing to make it change colors but couldn't get it to change. Don't know what the deal was. Maybe I was too impatient but it seemed like I tried for a long time and still nothing happened. I'm going to try the tubing again someday and see if it was just the kind I had that wouldn't do it. I can't imagine there was any kind of coating on that tubing that prevented it from changing color.

That was so much fun, I may have to make another for me