Hello all!

I was going to post about something else today, but decided to change my post after looking through our previous posts. I realized that we talked a lot about how we made our cosplays, but didn’t include the brands of the products we used. I’ll go through the specific materials we used, where we found them and how much we paid. We used these products to make my Shyvana helmet, Cute Sauce’s Riven armor, and Ninja Bunnies Katarina swords.

Foam Board:

Foams boards are often over priced at art stores such as Curry’s (Ontario) and Omer Deserres (Montreal). They can range from $4.99 to $9.99. We were lucky enough to find them at the Dollarama sells them for $1.25. The dimensions are 30” x 20” and 1/4” thickness, you can compare the dimensions and prices with other stores. The quality difference is noticeable, but after the spray foam and fast mache, the quality of foam the board doesn’t matter. Foam board is what I used to make the horns of my helmet, one layer was good enough for me.

Spray Foam:

Cute Sauce saw other cosplay forums using spray foam, so we tried it ourselves. We used Great Stuff, a gap filler spray foam. We’ve tried the Gaps & Cracks as well as the Big Gap Filler. Surprisingly I found the Big Gap Filler to have less holes in the filling and easier to carve. With a sharp exacto knife, cutting foam is like sculpting butter. I highly recommend using this for cosplay props or armor. Its light, easy to use and cheap. We found it on sale for $8.99 at Home Depot, but without the sale it might be around $10.99. Though this stuff is easy to use and great for cosplay, use it in a ventilated area like a basement or garage. I know most products say don’t get it on your hands! Super glue, I ignore that rule but this stuff please do not get on your hands! It took me three days to fully get it off, and it sticks like crazy. Use the spray foam as much as possible for details so that you use less fast mache. This will allow you to save your mache and in the end your prop will be lighter.

Regular Paper Mache:

For those who do not know, regular paper mache just needs flour, glue and water! Its pretty much like making a watered version of dough, but for your arts and crafts. Just use torn scraps of paper, most people use newspaper.

Fast Mache:

We use this brand and have only used this one. You can try other brands, but since this one has been working for us, we will continue to use it. It’s $13.99 at Micheals (Ontario). It can be difficult to apply on to foam, so sometimes I used regular mache before using Fast Mache. This is also beneficial because you save Fast Mache by covering the holes with regular mache. I also highly recommend Fast Mache because it is light compared to some other products such as bondo. It’s easy to sand, and sculpt after drying. It dries pretty hard if you wait a couple of days, so its best to sand right after a day of drying. It looks like a small box, but with one box I was able to do my helmet and my arm pieces. To learn more about fast mache click here.

References:

To see how I made my helmet with these products click here

To see how Cute Sauce make her armor with these products click here

To see how Ninja Bunnies make her swords with these products click here

Shyvana Update:

As for my Shyvana cosplay, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to update you this post! I started the armor, but its not done enough to show you =). I got my contacts I’ll show a picture of me wearing them next post with my armor pieces done!

Stay Tuned!