Eye of Sauron

We love the Lord of the Rings here. It ranks high on my list of favorite books and movies, and has been a priority to share with the kids. So I was super excited when December's theme for Crafting Con was The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Patrick and I brainstormed a bit, since he's also a fan, and we came up with a few ideas to let Cyrus choose from. (Ellie hasn't actually seen the movies yet.) And, drumroll... This is the end result.

Truthfully, I don't think Cyrus remembers any of what he's seen. Patrick and I showed him the Fellowship a couple of years ago when he was the ring bearer in our friends' wedding, and was dressed as Frodo.

Gratuitous throwback photo. He was a month shy of 5 here. Where did that baby face go?

This time around though, he decided he wanted a hoodie with the Eye of Sauron. What's up with little boys and villains? I made a Greenstyle Creations Lacy N Lane, and he got his eye of Sauron. This piece actually ended up about a hundred miles from my original plan. I wanted to try Lumi Inkodye, and we came up with this design to print on the film.

Sketchy, firey eye, encircled by the ring inscription. Tell me that would not have been awesome.

I slathered dye all over the required area of the shirt, pinned the negative in place, and put it in the dying sun coming through the dining room window. Nothing. It really does require good sunlight, so I tried again the next day, using the brightest part of the afternoon on my back steps. After about three times the suggested developing time, the result was, well... Uninspiring, and very hard to see. I was incredibly disappointed. Not all of it showed up, and the words that did were all blurred together. So my other tip if you plan to try Inkodye? Don't use a finely detailed image. It will likely lead to disappointment.

It was still wet from washing out the excess dye.

In the end, I salvaged it with good old fabric paint. I was a little concerned, as I've never considered myself to be great with things like paint. It's not my greatest artistic area. However, seeing as the shirt I had put so much time into already was ruined, it couldn't end up worse. I'm so glad I did. I used Setacolor paints (I used the transparent line, which has been discontinued) and just went to town. The black center of the eye was actually first, then I layered yellow, orange, and red out from the corners to make the eye shape, finishing with a couple of smudges of black. And the end result is pretty good. The one last remaining gripe I have about the whole thing is that when I started out way back with the Inkodye, I placed the design too low, so it's across his belly instead of up toward his chest, but that's a small thing.

 

He loves it, which is really the most important thing. Though I think his favorite part of the whole thing ended up being the thumbhole cuffs, which I could have totally managed without the trials of making a fiery eye. I guess that's what you get for messing with the Dark Lord of Mordor and his eye!