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Intro
Two years ago I rocked the house with a sweet Scooby Doo costume. Last year I was a Ninja (but aren’t I always?). This year was a bit different…a bit more traditional/spooky/subtle. Black Sclera contacts.
For those of you that don’t know and are slightly curious, Sclera Contacts are contacts that cover…well…the sclera:
My Experience
Overall, I have been very happy with my contacts once I learned how to put them in. The look is just creepy and causes double-takes of passerby. At the Halloween party that I attended and throughout the day at work while the contacts were in place, I got just the right amount of surprise, disgust, averted eyes, and laughs to make it all worth while.
Thank god that I have a MacBook Pro with a webcam on it because the contacts have popped out a number of times and had no desire to use public bathrooms for contact insertion (in the off chance they fell on the floor). Setting the webcam’s properties, my monitor becomes a handy dandy electronic mirror! w00t!
Here’s a quick little video of me with my Sclera in place at home along with fake teeth from Dental Distortions:
What few know is how long it took me to learn to put these quarter-sized contacts into my head. To just get one in, it took me over an hour and a half of actual attempting split up by searches online and questions to contact wearing friends for help. It wasn’t until I found this awesome video that I actually learned how to insert the little suckers. Kudos to whoever it was that threw that puppy together.
The Drawbacks
Despite the cool factor…there are some drawbacks.
- Comfort…or Lack Thereof
- Prescription
- Price
- Installation into head
Comfort…or Lack Thereof
Because the contacts that I ordered are not custom fit (few Theatrical Sclera Contacts are), there is some level of discomfort that comes and goes with increasing frequency the longer you wear them. I find myself adjusting the contacts throughout the day to ensure optimal visibility and minimize the blurriness caused by creases that creep up due to my eye being a bit too small for the contact’s diameter of 22mm.
Prescription
A prescription is required even for non-corrective lenses because contacts are a “medical device.” Fine fine…I’d understand that if they were custom fit for my eyes (which they aren’t, typically) and corrective. But stock sizes and non-corrective shouldn’t require a prescription. The lame part about that is…even though you are required to have a prescription, if they cannot contact your eye doctor within 3 days, the order is processed anyways (due to The Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act passed in 2004). Such is life, I suppose.
Price
Sclera lenses cost an arm and a leg. I set my sights (pun intended) on these contacts last halloween and saved accordingly. The lenses I purchased cost $128 a lens. Yup. Per lens. The enjoyment is worth it though (at least that’s what I keep telling myself).
Installation In To Head
As I mentioned before, putting these quarter sized objects on top of my eyes was very difficult at first taking a good 10 minutes per eye once I finally knew how to put them in (thanks to this awesome video). Never having worn contact lenses before made this very complicated for me. Now that I have removed and inserted them a number of times I can do so with little irritation and typically on the first or second try (sometimes third if I have no mirror).
Basically what needs to be done is this:
- Wash your hands
- Clean the contacts
- Make sure the contact lens is not inside out (an inside-out contact lens flares out along the edges)
- Place the ridiculously huge contact on the tip of your index finger and middle finger of your dominant hand, curved side down (of course)
- Hold your upper eyelid up with your non-dominant hand just enough for you to slip the edge of the contact under your eyelid with your dominant hand (index and middle fingers).
- Next, basically wiggle and shove the contact up under your lid (opening your other eye and looking into a mirror to check your progress is key) until the majority of the contact is shoved under the lid. This can fill like shoving a handful of gravel in your eye, but that passes quickly.
- As soon as you notice that the contact is sufficiently shoved under your upper lid, release that lid with your non-dominant hand and pry your lower lid down and over the lower part of the contact lens.
- At this point, depending on how sensitive your eye is, you may need to close your eye tightly to get your bearings because it may still hurt at this point. Keep it closed until you feel you can open your eye just enough to wiggle the contact around on your eye to get it in place. This gets easier and less painful each time you do it.
- The end. w00t. If you are doing two contact lenses…I’d suggest doing the eye opposite your dominant hand. (if you are right handed, do your left eye first and vice versa). That worked out better for me.
Getting Halloween Sclera Contacts
If you are totally pumped and want your own, you can pick up some Theatrical/Movie/Halloween Sclera (sometimes called full-eye) contacts at a number of places:
- FXEyes
- Coastal Contacts
- ExtremeSFX
- etc…just search for on the interwebs and you should find a supplier.
Comments
17 responses to “Halloween: A Day With Black Sclera Contacts”
Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you putting this up ^.^ I just spent an arm and a leg on 2 diff types of sclera contacts & when I finally got them I spent over an hour unsuccessfully trying to shove the suckers in my eye. If I hadn’t found this page, it would have been a couple hundred bucks down the drain. Thanks so much for your help!!
~Jynx
Glad you found this post useful! Once I bought my contacts, I searched all over the place for helpful tips on getting them in…There just wasn’t much out there. I was worried about wasting my money too. Once I finally got them in I was psyched! :D
So what you mean is, if the company cannot get ahold of your optomitrist within three days, they will send you the contacts anyway? Or do they just take your money? Because my optomitrist won’t approve me for the sclera contacts because he has no idea how to fit someone for something like that. I really want these, and was planning an amazing costume and without them, it might just look tacky. What was the exact website you got them from just incase that can’t “reach my optomitrist” lol?
If the company cannot get a hold of the optometrist in three days, they send you the contacts anyways. The company I went through was http://www.coastalcontacts.com.
Oh…well I called that place and they said 8 bussiness hours…oh, and can you see your iris around the pupil hole?
Nice. 8 hours is even better! I just re-read the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers and it does say 8 hours…not sure where I got the “3 days.” Anyhow, your iris isn’t generally visible unless the lens shifts in your eye (which it inevitably will). Pictures taken with a flash sometimes make the lenses look odd in the photos, though.
So, how many days total did it take for you to recieve them?
you just give them the name and number of your buddy and they will send them out to you in a day or two the doc thing is just a CYA for the company. Trust me they want your money in this economy.
Thanks for posting this. I’ve noticed that some companies have a 2-year expiration on their sclera’s and some do not. Coastal Contacts does not mention the 2-year expiration for their contacts on their website. Did they provide you with any additional info regarding an expiration or average life-span when the contacts arrived?
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Was wondering about buying these for halloween, but I think not :D Would never be able to “install them into head” xDD you have the cutest way of expressing yourself!!! xD
Matt,
I’m writing an article on Black-Eyed Kids and was extremely happy to find your post. From your Halloween 2007 experience, would you say children from four to 15 years of age be able to pull off wearing those contacts? I’d really like to hear from you. If you have any questions about Black-Eyed Kids, please let me know.
Best.
Jason Offutt
How was your vision with them on?
You paid $128 for those? Jeez, i found a vendor offering a pair of them for fifty bucks at an anime convention in my hometown. I didn’t have the cash for them so i settled for a pair of regular-sized red lenses, i guess i should have taken the bargain.
Good info, the video helped a lot. I run a blog about black contacts if anybody is interested in more. I’m always looking for contributors and ideas.
Hey I was wondering…I really like the black sclera contacts and i think their super cool…but how do I know what size and diameter I should get?:::
You can find all of that out from an optometrist when you get sized for contacts. A number of places (including Coastal Contacts, where I picked up my sclera lenses) only sell one-size sclera lenses. If you have a way to get custom-sized lenses…definitely do that. Mine didn’t fit all that well, so they irritated me more throughout the day.