Well they have been requested many times, and I thought that this would be a really easy, really quick effect that a lot of us could benefit from. Syringes are a very common prop in stuff like Medical shows, and the like, and can have a lot of uses in a variety of plots and situations. So since you Moguler’s out there wanted to know how to make this really simple prop, I thought it was definitely time to make a tutorial and show everyone out there one way to make a safe and easy syringe prop for cheap.
I start with this, it is an “Oral Syringe” generally used for giving medicine to babies, or animals. I got this at my local supermarket, and only cost me a couple of bucks. You can see it already looks pretty close to a medical syringe without much alteration.
The next part is obviously the needle. I like using mechanical pencil lead for this part, because it’s easy to get, it’s brittle enough that it generally breaks before it actually pierces skin, so it’s safe to use in a prop needle.
Next, I filled the tip of the syringe with some polymer clay…
And there you go. Now, the reason why I filled it with Polymer clay, is that is doesn’t dissolve in the water (like air-dry clay), and it still has enough give that when you push the needle against the skin, it still slides back into the syringe body.
If you also want an IV line with this, I have found that just some clear Vinyl tubing taped down works well enough for most scenes.