Ojo de Dios / God’s Eye

Wow, summer of 2020 is almost over! It’s been… interesting. Thankfully we have old-school crafts like these God’s Eyes to keep us distracted from current events. I wrote a post about “Ojo de Dios” exactly 8 years ago when I first started my blog. I decided to update my old post instead of adding a new one. I think I’ll just keep adding to this post each time I make new variations!

So I’ll start with the new 6-pointed (3 twigs) God’s eyes that I made this week. And then I’ll go back in time and add in the old photos from when we made the more traditional 4-pointed (2 twig) God’s eyes. With their Mexican roots, these Ojo de Dios’ are colorful, beautiful, and always a joy to make!

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Supplies needed for God’s Eyes

~ Sticks, twigs, skewers, dowels (cut to size) or popsicle sticks

~ Glue gun

~ Yarn (I buy mine locally at the craft store)

~ Good, sharp scissors

How to make a 6-pointed God’s Eye

1. Choose your “color story” by selecting the yarns you want to use.

2. Hot glue your sticks together.

3. The trickiest part is just starting. Begin by wrapping the string through the middle 5 or 6 times. Do this in all three directions (or two directions with a traditional 2-stick God’s eye).

4. When you feel like you’ve covered the twig intersection sufficiently, start the over-under technique. (Or under-over, depending on if you want the string to go under the twigs and show the “skeleton” or if you want the twigs to stay “behind” the yarn. For these I chose to have the middle pop out by wrapping the yarn over the sticks, but for the body of the God’s eye I chose to go under the sticks to showcase the armature a bit more. See the video below for more details.)

Basically, you just wrap the yarn once around the twig then continue to the next twig.

5. For these God’s eyes, I wanted the middle to pop so I flipped it over so that the back became the front. There are two ways of doing this, which you can see in the video below.

6. Attach new colors by tying them together on the back, just under one of the twigs. Continue wrapping until you want to use the next color.

7. To end, tie a knot, trim, and hot glue the end to the back.

Watch the VIDEO below for the full tutorial

Here is an 8-minute video which shows you exactly how I made them with lots more details!

I could make these ALL DAY LONG! And I think I’m inspired enough to make a whole wall. So stay tuned for that post!

How to make a traditional God’s eye

Here is a more traditional way to make a God’s eye with just two twigs. The tutorial is the same whether you use 3 twigs or 2 twigs, so use the steps above. Here I pre-glued crosses for my art camp students.

The difference between these and the first ones I showed you is that we did over-under here to hide the twigs, whereas up top we did under-over to expose the twigs.

My campers were ages 4-7 and they all got the hang of it! The hardest part is that the yarn can get stuck on the twigs as you are wrapping, so if your child gets frustrated just be a helper to untangle the yarn.

Tying on the next color. Kids start getting very good at tying knots!

Aren’t these the best? We ran out of twigs that day so I quickly hot-glued some popsicle sticks together and my campers just kept on wrapping yarn and making more God’s eyes.

And I even made a bunch last Christmas that were teeny little place cards. I mean… can you tell I’m a bit fixated on this old-school craft?

I hope you try! Don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @artbarblog!

xo Bar

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Did you like this post? Here are some more arts and crafts using yarn: