Amazing Casting Products: Sit for a #Cre8time Spell! #DIY Eye of Newt Apothecary Jar by Tracy Alden

Tuesday, October 6

Sit for a #Cre8time Spell! #DIY Eye of Newt Apothecary Jar by Tracy Alden

Hello! Tracy here with another Amazing Casting Products inspiration post! This time I am taking inspiration from one of William Shakespeare's most famous plays, Macbeth:

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing, --
For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

That part of the play has a wonderful spooky quality, often inspiring all types of ghoulish displays and decor for Halloween. The interesting part is that most of those names of ingredients were not intended to be taken literal, but were herbalist or folk terms for common herbs and plants. In the case of "Eye of newt" it was referring to a type of mustard seed. However thanks to pop culture more often than not most people think of real newt eyes in a jar. So knowing some seeds in a jar isn't that ghoulish of a Halloween decoration I decided to go with the pop culture version of making a jar with faux newt eyes.

Now I already have a growing collection of bottled fantasy curiosities I have created and bought. So following along the lines of my Zombie Apothecary Jars I cleaned up a old jar. In this case it was formerly a 3 wick candle jar, as the glass was heavy and the lid metal, making it perfect for an apothecary jar.

I put some dried moss at the bottom of the jar to add some visual contrast. It would also help with adding some textured base to prop the fake eyes on so they wouldn't all sink to the bottom.

I mixed up 3 fluid ounces of Amazing Clear Cast Resin

and slowly poured it on top of the moss to cover it.

The moss became a bit dark after the resin started to soak into it, so before the resin layer started to cure I sprinkled a bit of micro crystal glitter to give just a slight shimmer to the moss layer.

For newt eyes I used transparent acrylic Eye of Warding beads carefully placed in the still wet resin. Recent popularity of the beads has had a lot of bead manufacturers making all kinds of the Eye of Warding beads out of glass, acrylic, clay and even recycled plastic. *Take a trip to your favorite craft store to check out what types of beads they might have for you to use!

Once I let the first layer of resin cure for about an hour I added some more eye beads and little snippets of moss. I didn't want to add too much. I wanted it to look like someone used the "newt eyes" a lot in their spells.

While the final layer of resin cured I worked on the lid to the jar. To bring down some of the bright silver tone of the lid I used some sandpaper and little bit of chalk paint to give it an aged look. A painted wooded bead glued on top of the lid gave it a pull knob.