Randomly Taylor'd: Custom 3D/Hipster Glasses Tutorial

This is my first tutorial so bear with me here. I'm going to show you how to make a customized pair of 3D glasses (or hipster glasses if you don't have the patience to put the lenses back in.

What you will need:

a pair of realD 3D glasses taken apart, lenses removed


acrylic paint, paint brushes, water


Optional: Spray glaze. I used it because it gives the painted glasses a better feel when finished		I picked mine up at walmart for about $5.

Not shown:

Sandpaper (or in my case unused pedipaws - the cats hated it)

Painter's tape/masking tape (optional)

sheets of paper or old box for spray glaze

craft knives

scissors

You first want to pop out the lenses (or if you want to save yourself the trouble you can cover it in painter's tape, but I popped the lenses out, and take the glasses apart, they have no screws so they come apart pretty easily. Next you want to sand the glasses down, preferably all sides. I didn't sand the back of the eye pieces and you can tell. Sanding roughs up the surface and helps the acrylic paint stick better. on the back of my glasses you can tell where I didn't sand since the paint is chipping off from the last step (not too noticeable though)


sand down all the surfaces (this went a lot faster when I found the actual pedipaws and not just use the sanding wheel)

This is what it looked like after sanding.

After sanding, you want to pick your paint colours. I chose a base colour of purple and an accent colour of yellow with a bit of silver mixed in. I only did one coat of my purple base, it was thick enough to not have to do a second layer.

paint on your base colour (you may want to do 2 coats depending on your colour choice and paint consistency)


sides painted. the colour didn't show up too well.

Allow to dry, with acrylic paint it should only take a few minutes. Choose what you want to use as your design and colours. mine happened to be yellow polka dots.

Air dry. (this shows the colour a little more accurately)

nice simple polka dots (really fun to do)

I painted the front only of the main glasses and the whole of the arms and allowed to dry.

spray both sides of the glasses with your glaze. this particular type says to allow 10 minutes between coats, I did 1 coat but flipped them after about 20 minutes to spray the other side.

The following 4 steps are only if you removed the lenses and want to put them back in to have custom 3D glasses instead of the classic discount hipster shades.

on a scrap piece of paper trace the inside of where your lenses should be. I almost forgot this step hence why one lens is already back in place.


Using a craft knife or a thin sharpie, cut or draw on the lens about 1/8" around your lens tracing. I ended up cutting the excess off with scissors. any bigger than this allowance and the lens won't go back into the glasses.

You now want to take a craft knife and carefully reopen the slot where your lenses were. mine were filled with paint that had to be removed.

This is the hard part. you have to now maneuver the lens back into place, each lens took me about 5 minutes. be careful not to bend or crack the lens, they may not work properly if you do.