Pins made from lenses

PINS (BROOCHES)


made from eye glass lenses

This project is rated as EASY.

Materials needed: Eye glass lenses, artwork (from greeting cards, decals, clip art, etc.), scissors (or craft knife), pin backs, glue (two types), paint.

Do you have some old glasses that you don't use anymore?

You may have wondered what to do with them. Here is a dandy project for turning them into something useful.

You can make attractive pins such as the one shown above. Here is how you do it:

1. Select a lens and clean it thoroughly.
2. Select some suitable artwork. You will need small pictures that will fit your lens. There are several sources for this artwork. Greeting cards often have small flowers or other useable pictures. You can purchase decals or stickers. There is a lot of clip art available; it has the advantage that you can re-size it to fit your lens. You will need a color printer if the artwork is in color. If you have a picture but it is too large, take it to a copy center and have it reduced in size. I suggest that you put several pieces of artwork on one sheet so that you can reduce all of them for the price of one copy. My copy center will make a color copy for 89 cents.
3. The next step is to fasten the artwork to the back side of the lens. Decals will adhere to the glass without any glue. Artwork on paper needs to be glued to the lens. Craft stores carry white glue that will be transparent when dry. It is best to glue your artwork to the lens before you trim it. This has the advantage that you can move the artwork to position it before the glue is dry. Since the lens is concave on the back side, you must press the artwork into this shape and push out any creases that might result.
4. Allow adequate time for the glue or decal to dry. If you have used a decal, there will probably be some clear space around the decal. You may leave it that way and when you pin it to a garment, the cloth will show through. However, the decal will usually have a clear portion around the edges that will show. I find that if you paint the backside of the lens over the decal and clear glass, the decal edges don't show and you can select the background color that pleases you. Here is a pin made with a decal and the background painted with a brass color paint.

5. If you have used paint, wait for it to be thoroughly dry. Then mount a pin back on it with glue. You will find pin backs in various sizes at craft stores. You will need to use a different type of glue to fasten the pin back on to the pin. I usually use epoxy cement. Here is a rear view of the above pin.

Your pin is now complete. To give you some ideas about other artwork, I will give you some additional examples:

here is another pin made using a decal:

you may want to use decal letters, such as this:

you can print a name, comment, slogan, etc. on colored paper and make a pin like the one shown.

here are some examples of artwork which was found on Christmas cards:

You can make great Christmas gifts from old eye glass lenses, but you can also make gifts for other holidays such as St. Valentine's Day. here is some Valentine's day art:

Let your imagination loose and create your own variations.

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