Arming My Self

The armor for Reina is coming along swimmingly, with very few bumps *frantic attacking of trees and tables and any other knocking-on-wood surfaces within reach*
A temporary update on how it looks not on body yet (from about 3 weeks ago):


And here are pictures of the gauntlet templates:





Once the arm is glued up and dried I will do an up to date full body test with pictures.

Thou Shalt Not Stain Thine Cosplay

It's like a second Christmas today! I got my fabric packages within minuets of each other.






I left my breastplate under a stack of books last night to dry, with a scrapped together puzzle of extra foam jig to stretch the vinyl around the raised "ab" area.






Only thing is... There was some sharpie... And... TwT *sniffle*






Well here's the back:





At least the technique worked PERFECTLY. If I can't get the stain out or work around it when I airbrush highlights, I have lots of extra fabric and can make a new one.
I am become 'ze proud papa!

Sticky situation

So I got started with gluing the foam and the vinyl together. First I used the weldwood cement to laminate three layers of foam together to get the thickness I wanted. Then I used my paper templates to cut out the armor pieces in foam.



(sorry its sideways)

Then fit check:



This is a basic idea of what it will look like. Also very basically this is what the gluing process looks like (if you are interested in the process itself, go to Goldy's tutorial page. I have a link to it on the right):



And this is what it will look like!



EDIT: I forgot to mention! That DAP Weldwood cement stuff is NOXIOUS. I got a massive headache from it even though I have plenty of ventilation. It's hard to avoid smelling it when you are doing teeny tiny cuts and your face is 6" from it, so I highly suggest putting on a respirator! I just grabbed the 3M one with fume cartridges that I use for sculpture...

Very Little Armor

Separately, I am working on a Reina cos from Queen's Blade for Otakon this year. I am using the vinyl-over-foam technique to make the armor. A list of great sites with tutorials on how to do it are:

Goldy's Tutorial

Cosplay.com's Forum

And a great step-by-step with pictures

Here is my progress so far with making a plastic wrap body-double of my legs, and the paper template of the chest piece:

I have a feeling that there will be a big learning curve with the glue and the foam.