Bigger is Better: Safety Eyes

Hi, all! I’m popping in with a quick post today to share some details on some very fun safety eyes I got recently (plus a discount code to grab some!)

I always get a lot of questions about where I get my safety eyes; for some unknown reason, these puppies are just so hard to source, especially good quality ones that won’t break the bank.

Let’s talk about that for a sec. Like, why on earth don’t Michaels Stores carry a good selection of safety eyes? For years and years, they carried none at all. Very recently (seriously, only a few months ago), I did notice that they started carrying some; I saw a teeny tiny selection of safety eyes on a rack near the yarn aisle. I was excited for a hot minute, only to have my hopes dashed; there were no size options, the packets came with only 3 or 4 in a pack, they were overpriced, and they didn’t look to be great quality. Yikes. No, thanks.

Maybe you have better luck sourcing safety eyes locally, but I’ve been buying mine from Amazon for a long time. They are generally very affordable (the ones I get come in packs of 100 or 150 but you can get much bigger packs!) and they’re decent quality (not amazing, mind you, but they get the job done). They usually come with 5 different sizes (6mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, and 12mm), one of which almost always works for any type of amigurumi I’m working on.

The downside is that shipping can sometimes take a long time (especially these days), OR they may not show up at all. Yup, you read that right. I cannot count the number of times I have ordered safety eyes only to have them never show up because they were purchased from a not particularly reliable vendor (I have learned that the vendor is everything when it comes to Amazon safety eyes!)

The other downside is that it’s hard to find safety eyes that are over 12mm. But sometimes you want variety, you know? So I was absolutely pumped when a company called Craft Eyes offered to send me a few of their specialty safety eyes to try.

I browsed their site (crafteyes.com or @crafteyes_com on Instagram!) and was blown away. They have so. many. types. of safety eyes. Like, more than I even knew existed. There is a safety eye for absolutely anything and everything. So many beautiful colours, designs, and shapes.

Honestly, I was a little overwhelmed by all of the options at first. In the end, I knew I would get the most use out of classic black, since that is the only type of safety eye I use with my amigurumi. So, rather than get different colours and shapes, I opted instead to get only black but to try lots of different sizes of eyes!

I decided to go with: 12mm (to see how they compare to the usual 12mm I always use), 15mm, 18mm, 25mm and a whopping 35mm!

The quality is sublime; they are beautiful and shiny and perfect. I haven’t used any of them yet but I have been wanting to try Extreme Amigurumi for a while and those 35mm babies are just the ticket. (“Extreme Amigurumi”, you ask? Check out Holly’s blog post series on extreme amigurumi on the Storyland Ami blog here!)

These eyes are a little pricier than any you would buy on Amazon, but the quality and selection more than justifies that, in my opinion (on some eyes, you can choose a stem or loop back, as well as choosing the iris size on almost all eyes!). But, not to worry! Craft Eyes is offering a 20% discount when you use the code spinayarn at checkout! Yay! They ship worldwide so get browsing!

This could be a major game-changer with your amigurumi. I would love to see if you have used any Craft Eyes safety eyes in your projects already! Please tag me in those pics on Fb and IG!

Phew. That was a lot of talk about safety eyes but these are the things that us amigurumists are passionate about. It’s all in the details!

Please leave your suggestions for what I should make using the 35mm eyes. I am open to any and all ideas! Have you used safety eyes this big (or bigger?!) in your crochet before? I’d love to hear about it!