DIY Eye lichen - fan's labyrinth

Some friends of mine are getting married this year. They would have been married already, had it not been for a certain bug that's going around. The bride-to-be, Amy, asked if I wouldn't mind making some eye lichen props from the 1986 Jim Henson film "The Labyrinth". I can't show you pictures of that particular prop for copyright reasons, but if you google "eye lichen" you'll see what I mean. When Amy said it would get me out of having to buy a wedding present, that sealed the deal.

It's not that I'm tight with money, I'm just crap at coming up with present ideas! The build is for three separate eye lichen pieces, each with at least five eye-stalks on. Luckily, I had most of the materials for this build lying around, or within easy stealing reach.

• Fence wire.

• Three millimetre plywood.

• Small cable ties.

• Polystyrene balls.

• Tin foil.

• Air-drying clay.

• Three millimetre dowel. I could have used more bits of fence wire, but I had this lying around.

• Sea sponge.

• Dye.

• Contact adhesive.

The sea sponge was the only thing I had to buy in.

The first step is to cut the plywood up to make a back-plate for each eye lichen piece. The eye-stalks will attach to this.

When using a jigsaw, always support the work on a stable, secure surface.

I need to cut an inner hole that follows the outer contours of a second piece of cut plywood, again, one for each of the three eye lichen props. It will be easier to explain why this needs doing when I start attaching the eye-stalks.

Life-size modelling work needs sturdy materials. High-tensile steel fence wire is about as tough as it gets for the eye-stalks.

As each of the three back plates is made out of two separate bits of plywood, they'll need gluing together with PVA. Given plenty of time to dry and compressed under this big-ass stone, this join will be strong as all hell.

I'll be spamming that area of the back plates where the eye-stalks are going to poke through with holes, so that I'll have plenty of options to choose from when I arrange the eyes. Now it might start to become apparent why I needed two layers of plywood. I've only drilled in the area inside the hollowed-out section of the smaller piece of ply. That way the hooked ends at the back of the eye-stalks can be tucked away neatly, allowing the ply back-plates to sit nice and flat when they're hung on a wall, or whatever. Of course, the lengths of wire might need some 'gentle persuasion' to sit nicely in the cutout rebate. I tried wiring the eye-stalks in place but these small cable ties were so much easier to work with. The beauty of having spammed the inside of the back-plate with so many holes is it gave me plenty of places to push the cable ties through.

Flush! (flat).

Time to start making the eyeballs. I had this hot foam cutting tool, but to be honest, I could have gotten away with using a craft knife to make these cuts. This is so that the eyeballs sit over the ends of the eye-stalks for durability reasons.

You can see that I doubled the eye-stalk ends over for safety reasons Can't have anyone impaling themselves on the prop! A swift panning shot to show the eyeballs in situ, before I bust out the hot glue gun to fix them in place.

The hot glue gun: standard sidearm of any crafter!

I'm going to put a thin layer of air-drying clay on the eyeballs so it's less obvious they're made out of polystyrene. I also need to bulk out the stalks between the eyes and the back-plate. That's a simple matter of wrapping both eye and stalk with tinfoil. As I've mentioned in other videos, tin foil is a great base for air-drying clay and for cheaply bulking out, but any loose bits can cause trouble down the line if they're not firmly glued down. You know, something's wrong... something's not right... Sod it - the eye-stalks are too long. I'll spare you the stage why had to redo all the cable tie work to get the re cut eye-stalks back in place. I'm much happier with the length of the eye-stalks now, but it's occurred to me that the back plates look a little boring around the edges. I decided to go off the original design and have some little eyeball buds, so to speak, where the new stalks are beginning to form, poking out of the bare areas to liven them up.

I don't think air-drying clay in and of itself is adhesive enough to stick to bare plywood on its own. I've cut these spare bits of dowel to use as an anchor, one for each eye bud. I'll drill the back plates of each eye lichen piece and glue the dowels in place. The eye buds themselves are just blobs of air-drying clay held into place with hot glue as well as the dowels around which they're formed. They don't need to be perfectly spherical like actual eyeballs, because the join between the eyes and the back-plate will be covered with fake moss. Real moss would have decayed sooner or later, so this dried sea sponge is a better choice. It's almost the right colour, but needs dyeing to make it greener. Before dyeing, I may as well tear the sponge into pieces of the right size and shape for gluing onto the model without further modification. That way I can be sure the ink I'll be using will get onto - and into - every surface Some cheeky forehead-mounted camera footage shows me adding yellow and blue ink to some warm water to make a thinnish, green dye. Once that's about right, in go the pre-torn sponge chunks. The fake moss took a bloody age to dry! Who'da thought sponge could hold so much water? I used the time to paint the eyes, both the ones on the stalks and the eye buds decorating the back plate.

Irises first, with a mixture of royal and lagoon blues. Straight head black for the pupils.

You know what, the distinction between the irises and the pupils isn't strong enough for my liking so I'm going to use a lighter pattern of the earlier blue mix to lighten the irises with some dotted patterns. Starting off with some coarse dots to take up most of the space, then some tiny dots to fill in the gaps between the bigger blobs.

Cor, that took a while! Luckily, I had an interesting audio book on the go. They still look a little flat, though, the eyes, so I'm going to add a point highlight to them to make them seem reflective. How's that, a bit more lifelike? Finally... finally! After an extended holiday in my parents' conservatory, the fake moss is dry enough to glue onto the model I'm using contact adhesive which forms a tougher bond than the sponge itself, which is saying something. Starting on the back plates, I'm working from the outside inwards. Having once been a living thing, sponge grows from a central point outwards, much like a plant. Even when it's been torn up, the pieces can have ends that look like shoots at one end and roots at the other. Obviously, the rooty bits are what I'm going to the back plate, with the shooty ends facing outwards. As I work inwards, I can cover up the glued, rooty ends with the shooty ends of other, overlying pieces. I really hope I made sense just then.

With the back-plates covered, I can follow the same technique for the eye-stalks. It makes sense to work backwards from the eyes for the same reason.

'Eye' hope that this project was to your lichen. I don't think his arrogance to say I suspect it'll go down well at the wedding. The music that was playing throughout the majority of the video, when I wasn't shamelessly ripping off the Hydraulic Press Channel theme for the angle-grinder work, was composed by a mate of mine Graham May, who also sometimes goes by the name of Loci. If you're interested in hearing more of his amazing and unusually creative work, please do go and check out his channel. Until next time, insert snappy sign-off... wait for it! HERE