Eye Glasses - Tutorial

Remember this picture from a couple of days ago?
I was showing off the vintage eye glasses I made.
Well here is the tutorial I promised.
Please excuse any blurry pictures.
My helper was not trained in this field. =)

What you will need

Wire- a bit about it:
I used *20 & 22 gauge.
(18 was too hard to work with, 24 might be fine)
I would just experiment with whatever you have on hand.
* the bigger the number, the smaller the wire.
I used both a black wire, and the silver wire in this post.
The kind that comes on larger rolls is best. no kinks.
Wire cutters
pliers
a round object
the size you want your lenses to be.
I used a bottle of nail polish.
a 2 oz bottle of acrylic paint is a good size too.

For the size glasses I made, I cut a 2' piece of wire.

Fold it in the middle to make the nose piece.

Eyepiece.

To make the eyepiece hold the center of the wire in your left hand.
Take the bottle in your right hand,
and place it just to the right of the center with the
wire going over the top of the bottle.
Holding the wire down on the bottle with your right thumb,
roll the wire around the bottle once,
and go past where you started.

close up below.
Do this on both sides.

You should end up with something similar to this.

A bit of work to do on these.
To shape up that left left piece,
just put the bottle back in and pull wire tighter.

Earpieces
You want to make sure they come to about
the same spot on both sides.
Now, with your hand or pliers,
bend each side so it goes back.
You want to gently, but firmly hold on to
your lenses while doing this, lest you bend
your new glasses out of shape. =)
This bending can be done at the top, or middle of the frames.
I ended up liking the middle the best.

Time to cut off extra wire.
Normally, glasses ear pieces are about as long
as the glasses are wide, so use wire
cutters to get rid of any extra now.

Ear pieces can be done several different ways,
just like regular glasses are different.
If you want a curved ear piece, just
fold it around your bottle like you did the frames.

Or you can just leave them straight out the back,
maybe curving them just slightly with your fingers.
(no picture)
Or, this is the newest one:
Fold the ear pieces back so it looks like they are folded up.
Just like we do with our own.
The other thing to be aware of, especially if you
are laying them down like they are in the picture below,

is that your frames need to be even with the nose piece.
You do not want the to rock when you set them down.
Did that make sense?

Tweaking your glasses:

Your glasses will probably have a bit of a gap between the wires.

To fix this, gently push the back wire
slightly through the frames to the front.
Then push them back.
Doing this will usually put them in pretty close.

And here are your glasses!!
They will take some practice to get them just so,
but a very inexpensive and fun project to do.

Now, where did I put my glasses?
Oh, there they are.

Here is another pair.

Can you find them in this picutre?

yep. one of my bears is wearing them.

I even made a pair for my granddaughters doll.

In case you are wondering how I got started doing these,
here is the story.

As always, if you do anything up from my tutorials, or
ideas you see here, please let me know.
I would love to how them off to my friends.

Blessings
barbara jean

I am signing up with some of the wonderful parties on my side bar.
Hope you will go check them out.