Photo by Blizzard Terrak Photography Photo by Kei Tsubasa Photography

Don’t mind the face… my wife is shy =P. Feels like so long ago, but for Anime Expo 2013 I made my wife (fiancee at the time) a Homura Akemi cosplay as well as the time shield. This was the first cosplay I sewed (it was an experiment!) and I couldn’t have made it without the help of Kaika and her great tutorial which you can find here: Homura Akemi Cosplay Tutorial by Kaika (The Cosplay Chronicles)

Since that tutorial was great, I want to contribute a quick and easy Time Shield prop tutorial. Total time, took about one day to make. Here we go!

Stage 1: Create Patterns and Transfer to Foam

Materials (Paid links):

1) First thing to do is to pattern the shield. Normally I would search google images for a good reference picture to print out and use as a skeleton, but I ran into this great diagram on deviant art by “Tanyopo” here.

2) I scaled the picture and printed out a few test sheets on normal paper till it was correctly sized to fit in my oven ring.

3) Once scaled, I printed the pattern out on card stock and cut out relevant details with an exacto kinfe.

4) I used the patterns to cut out the shield details on the 3mm foamies.

5) I used the oven ring to trace a circle onto the 1/2″ foam, cut it out with an xacto knife, then glued to the oven ring.

6) I wanted to make the time shield in “open mode” so for the sake of saving time cause I was in a rush, I took screen shots of the open shielf, printed it on cardstock, then cut out the center circle to use on the shield. Yes, very ghetto, but effective from distances a few feet away.

Stage 2: Seal and Paint

1) I sealed an painted the shield with my usual method which you can read about here:

How to seal and paint foam

2) After I painted the shield with gunmetal grey, I thought it was a bit too dark. To salvage my mistake, I used the silver leaf rub n buff all over the shield to lighten. It ended up giving it a nice weathered realistic look.

3) I used black acrylic paint with a brush to paint the gaps to make the details pop.

4) I attached the purple jewel pieces as well as the open time shield detail in the center.

Stage 3: Electronics

1) The purpose of the purple jewels was to diffuse the light. Underneath the shield, I had a hole where I glued the purple LEDs.

2) I soldered my leds to my battery holder and voila! Let there be light.

Questions? Feel free to ask, and also don’t forget to check out more on my facebook page:

Otaku and Fit Facebook Page