kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-05-29 06:03 am
Entry tags:

Eyes For Sale! 12mm & 10mm

Information about my eyes can be found here. All of my eyes are hand-made by me in urethane resin. I use premium quality materials.

Note that in some of these pictures, some of the eyes appear to have pupils that are not round. That is due to the angle of the photo and the light refraction in the dome (like when you put a straw in a glass of water and it looks like the straw is bending). All of my eyes have perfectly round pupils, which are themselves domed. This gives the eyes more depth and a "following" quality not seen in eyes with flat pupils.

Some eyes have bubbles, but unless they are obtrusively placed, very large, or there are lots of them, I don't discount for that. Bubbles are almost never visible when the eye is in a doll. If the eye has more than one or two very small bubbles, they have been noted in the description, and bubbles that I consider objectionable have been taken into account in the pricing.

All of my 12mm eyes are $45 per pair and all of my 10mm eyes are $40 per pair, unless marked otherwise.

Shipping is $6 domestically for up to 10 pairs of eyes. All eyes come packaged in black plastic double-walled jars to protect them from light when in storage and to protect them during transit.

Please PM me or eMail me (maxwellsdemon02@yahoo.com) if you are interested in purchasing any of the eyes shown here. Eyes are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The eyes for sale are under this cut. )
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-05-27 11:08 pm
Entry tags:

Eyes for Sale! 16mm & 14mm

These are stock from the convention that didn't sell, so I'm offering them online. I will also be listing some 12mm eyes and a small number (4 pairs) of 10mm eyes within the next day or so. (If you would like to purchase some of these 16mm or 14mm eyes, but think you might also like some of the 10mm or 12mm eyes, just let me know and I will reserve your selected 16mm/14mm eyes for you until the 10mm and 12mm eyes are photographed and I have them posted for you to peruse.)

Information about my eyes can be found here. All of my eyes are hand-made by me in urethane resin. I use premium quality materials.

Note that in some of these pictures, some of the eyes appear to have pupils that are not round. That is due to the angle of the photo and the light refraction in the dome (like when you put a straw in a glass of water and it looks like the straw is bending). All of my eyes have perfectly round pupils, which are themselves domed. This gives the eyes more depth and a "following" quality not seen in eyes with flat pupils.

Some eyes have bubbles, but unless they are obtrusively placed, very large, or there are lots of them, I don't discount for that. Bubbles are almost never visible when the eye is in a doll. If the eye has more than one or two very small bubbles, they have been noted in the description, and bubbles that I consider objectionable have been taken into account in the pricing.

All of my 16mm & 14mm eyes are $50 per pair, unless marked otherwise.

Shipping is $6 domestically for up to 10 pairs of eyes. All eyes come packaged in black plastic double-walled jars to protect them from light when in storage and to protect them during transit.

Please PM me or eMail me (maxwellsdemon02@yahoo.com) if you are interested in purchasing any of the eyes shown here. Eyes are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The eyes for sale are under this cut. )
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-05-12 02:48 am

Some Experimental Eyes (Both Unfinished, Obviously)

These 16mm eyes were experiments. I'm pleased with how they're turning out.



And these 12mm eyes are "Special Editions." They'll be priced a bit higher than my usual eyes, as the materials are a bit more costly and slightly harder to work with. They contain natural moonstones. It was hard getting a decent picture of them. These photos still don't do them justice. The moonstone pupil isn't visible until the light hits it. These are the kind of eyes that will look cool in photos, but that really have the most impact in person, since they change and move with the light.



Both pairs will be stock for my booth at the convention in Poulsbo, WA, on May 26th.
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-04-20 11:18 am

Even MORE Eyes!!

This is (most of) the rest of the last batch of eyes, which were doming yesterday. (I can only dome seven pairs at a time, because of space restrictions.) They're not quite done, obviously, and one or two of them have minor imperfections, but I like them. They'll all be added to convention stock.

The domes on the pink ones turned out too tall, which make them hard to position and magnifies the pupils a lot (it's why they look so big), so I'll have to fix that.

The teal 14mm ones on the lower left will probably be discounted, because one of the pupils ended up off-center. Despite that, they're gorgeous, and if they're positioned correctly you can't tell. I might also be able to correct it by reshaping the dome a little, but I'm not sure.

kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-04-19 06:16 am

More Eyes!!

These are some of my most recent eyes. Most of them are stock for the upcoming doll convention in Poulsbo, WA. They're not quite finished (the domes on them just finished curing), but at this stage, they're far enough along to give an accurate idea of what they'll look like when they're done.


Some close-up shots. )
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-04-16 08:48 am

Some Eyes

Here are some eyes I've made.

This is a prototype eye. I was playing around with a junk cast sclera (ran out of resin and didn't have enough to fill all my molds, so this eye has a hollow back/no stem) and the idea of foiling an iris instead of coloring it. I think it turned out pretty interesting. It does have some fairly annoying bubbles, but I wasn't being very careful when I made it, since it was just an experiment. It's a 16mm eye.

There are some more pictures under here. )
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-04-12 10:20 am
Entry tags:

Life, the Universe, and Everything

Life here has been a bit of a whirlwind. The medical stuff has been...rough. Cut for long-winded exposition of my recent medical situation. )

In other news, I think I've solved the bubble problem I was having with my eyes. I built a vacuum chamber (James helped with the hole-drilling I needed), and was very confused when my completely bubble-free resin seemed to spontaneously develop bubbles during it's curing process. Most sources online seemed to maintain that the bubbles were there in microscopic form despite the steps I had taken to remove them and my inability to find them with a flashlight and magnifying glass, and that they magically expanded when the resin hardened. Not satisfied with this explanation, I did some research on the actual chemical composition of polyurethane resins, and I learned some very interesting things. Notably, that curing the resin in areas where the humidity is too high or the temperature is too low will result in a change in the chemical reaction that causes the resin to harden, and will cause the resin to off-gas. While this off-gassing isn't a problem in the earlier stages of curing, once the viscosity of the resin has become high enough the gas being released will become trapped inside, which forms bubbles.

We happen to live in a humid climate, and the daily temperatures here are low from late October through the end of June, sometimes even into July.

A bit of research into localized humidity control methods and the judicious application of a space heater and I'm watching some test eyes (made with junk casts from cleaning my master molds) cure that appear to be almost entirely bubble-free. Since they were testers, I wasn't as careful with them as I usually would have been, and there are a few bubbles in them that I introduced myself. But there don't seem to be any spontaneous "magical" bubbles so far, which is a very good sign.

In other other news, I'm reading Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's The Grand Design, and thus far it is highly entertaining.
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-02-29 08:06 pm

Custom 14mm Eyes

I'm kind of sad that I have to send these on to their new owner. They're really lovely.





In other news, the eye making is coming along well.
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-02-18 05:50 am
Entry tags:

PNW BJD Expo Video Up

The PNW BJD Expo, which I'll be attending as a vendor, has put up a promotional video. It features two photos of my eyes; three lone eyes shown in a group at 0:38, and one photo of a pair of eyes in Darryl at 0:59.

kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-02-03 04:12 am

Junk Eyes

Here are some more of my junk eyes. I'm still having problems with air bubbles, particularly during the doming process. All of these eyes have imperfections that make them unsaleable. The purple eye is the worst - it shifted in the pressure pot during the curing process, and the dome ended up moving WAY off-center, so it looks like it has some kind of growth. The darker blue eye was a test subject for several different things, including touching the resin before it was fully cured to see what would happen. The answer? Lots of tiny, tiny gouges in the surface of the dome that make the eye look cloudy. The light blue eye actually turned out the best, but again has bubbles in it. For some reason, the clear resin isn't responding well to the pressure pot (not de-bubbling, surface texture going "wonky"), while the white resin does just fine in it. I'm really hoping I can solve the bubble issue without having to build a vacuum chamber. Building the pressure pot was difficult (and expensive) enough!



Since these are junk eyes, I probably won't bother removing the stems from the back. For the eyes I actually intend on selling, the backs will be removed, resulting in a flat-backed/half-round eye.
kiyakotari: (Default)
2012-02-01 05:37 pm

Making Progress

My eyes have improved by leaps and bounds over the last few weeks. You may remember these prototype eyes that I shared a while back. The eyes below are the exact same pair, with some updates. (They're junk versions, full of bubbles and stuff, but I've tried a few different techniques on them and learned what I do and do not like, as far as results go.)



Getting close to the finish line, now.
kiyakotari: (Default)
2011-12-08 06:04 am

Darryl 2.0

Just a one shot. Darryl's new self finally has eyes (of a sort). They're urethane prototypes that I made a few months ago, and have some problems, but they'll do for now.