The plastic ornament balls have a tab with a hole at the "top" that you are supposed to use to hang it from.  I normally sew that down to the face then cover that and the top part with fabric to act as an eyelid.  If you are putting them on without lids then you can drill a couple of small holes in the bottom and sides to secure them. Some folks paint them then glue a hunk of foam inside them that is then glued to the the puppet. The secret if you are gluing onto a fur covered face would be to cut away the fur where you want to glue the eye so that you are not gluing to the lose hair but to the base of the fabric underneath.

The plastic ornament balls have a tab with a hole at the "top" that you are supposed to use to hang it from.  I normally sew that down to the face then cover that and the top part with fabric to act as an eyelid.  If you are putting them on without lids then you can drill a couple of small holes in the bottom and sides to secure them. Some folks paint them then glue a hunk of foam inside them that is then glued to the the puppet. The secret if you are gluing onto a fur covered face would be to cut away the fur where you want to glue the eye so that you are not gluing to the lose hair but to the base of the fabric underneath.

Cool, thanks. That helps a lot.

Styrofoam balls can work fine but I normally try to cover them with either some layers of papermache' or in a fabric like felt. The reason is that they are easy to crush if you don't.  I prefer the papermache' method mostly because I can then paint them easily and even make them shiny if I want. If you can find them at the craft store they often have stryo balls that are denser. Often they are used to make Christmas ornaments. If you can find those they are better.  Also look for clear plastic balls and eggs that come apart. They are also intended for making ornaments and can be painted on the inside to make eyes. Note you have to paint them backwards. In other words you paint the pupil then the iris then the white of the eye.

What kind of paint do you recommend, if I try the ornament method?

Glad I'm not the only one

Nope! You're not! I do most of my building at night after the rest of the house has gone to bed. And when I'm not building I'm gaming. I'm an XBOX gamer who plays a lot of RPG's but most recently I've been playing Shoot Many Robots. Good, silly fun. I also play some multi-player stuff like Borderlands and Red Dead Redemption. But now it's time to head back into the shop so my play time will dip again. Still if you're looking to add an XBOX live friend that is also a puppet nut my gamertag is "Marcs gamertag". I live in the US Central time zone and am most often playing between midnight and 3am my time. So it would be early to mid afternoon in Australia. Not sure what zone you're in Trusty but at most I'd obviously only be an hour or two one way or the other. Whether we game together or not I'll see ya round the interwebs here at good old P&S!

Plain old acrylic paint will work fine.  Sometimes I've used spray paint for simple black pupil and white background. When you do that you need to make a small round mask to paint the black pupil and then spry white on the back or top of that from the back. You can mask of by using masking or painter tape. Just cover the inside with the tape and then cut a small round opening for the black pupil. After you spray the black then pull off the tape and spray with white!   The reason I like spray paint is because it is easier to get a smooth clean paint job without brush strokes in it.

Thinking more about the masking technique, I wonder if you could make a reusable mask using something like liquid latex?  My thought is you would coat the inside with 4 or 5 layers of latex then cut the pupil circle. Spray and then peel out so it can be used again. You would need to powder the latex mask before you pull it out so it does not stick to itself. Once you got it out you would also powder the outside area. Might work.  

Another thought for a re-usable mask would be to coat the inside with 4 or 5 layers of papermache' that you then cut the circle in. This might actually work better.

Both methods, I think you would need to use a releasing agent on the plastic before you started to create your mask. A cheap and dirty releasing agent for both would be Vaseline.  You just need to make sure to clean of the Vaseline really good or it can break down your mask over time.

BTW: if you wanted to create an eye with an iris color and spary paint you would add a second mask after the first pupil mask that was bigger and for the color. You could even get fancy and make the iris mask radiating lines of different color. That might be hard to do unless you created some type of re-usable mask.

Well folks, my first puppet is DONE!!

I got a cheap plastic toy plate for the mouth plate, along with adhesive rubber. I wimped out and used styrofoam balls for the eyes.

So here's a photo gallery of how it went:

http://haroldjennett.wordpress.com/my-first-puppet/

He's adorable! I love how huge his eyes turned out.

What a cutie! That puppet came out extremely well.

... Man, why is it all these people can make such great puppets first time around? My first one was crap!

Na, I am still working on the mechanics and I have practised for 2 years now...
He is so sweet. A bit like Pluto as a pup.

Yeah practice makes perfect... still I'm quite jealous of all these beginners