I decided that the foam based iris and pupil were the best solution for the current set of puppets. I have been searching for an way to cut smooth circles in the foam all week. I check in the scrap booking sections of several stores. The hole punches that they offer that are larger than 1/4 inch will not accept a piece of craft foam. They opening is only large enough for paper.
Today at Hobby Lobby, I found a perfect solution to cut holes of 3/4″, 1/2″, 0.28″ and 0.18″ in size. It is the FoamWerks foam board hole drill. It cuts through the foam beautifully. I settled on the 1/2″ hole for the iris, and .18″ hole for the pupil.
FoamWerks Hole Saw
Now that I had my sizes locked down I could start mass production.
Since I wanted to counter sink the iris and pupil into the eye, the first step was to build a jig that could hold the eyeball securely while I drilled. To do this I drilled a 1″ hole in a piece of scrap wood. I then screwed that wood to a larger board that I clamped to my drill press. The table of the drill press was put to a steep angle so that the circle would be cut into what will be the front of the eyeball.
Eyeball Jig
Then the eyeball is dropped in.
Eyeball in jig
I carefully held the eyeball in place while slowly drilling into it with a 1/2″ brad point bit.
Drilling into eyeball
I drill into the eye about 1/8″ of an inch. At this point the eyes are ready for being spray painted white. While the eyes are drying I went on to cut out the pupil and iris. I laid out a basic grid with the iris colored foam. Then I used the FoamWerks hole drill to drill out the pupil hole from the iris.
Cutting out the pupil hole
Once all of the pupil holes were cut out I switched to the 1/2″ hole drill, and cut out the iris from the piece of foam.
Removing the pupil from drill
Once I had all 16 of the iris’s cut, I switched to the black foam and started cutting out the pupils
Cutting pupils
I repeated the process and created 16 blue iris/pupil combinations.
Then the final step was to hot glue the pupil and iris onto the eyeball.
Eyeball with iris and pupil
The next step will be to add the eye lid and lashes.