~Sassy~

since it was like the week before the con, I ran out for one last mega-supplies run.  I was looking for EVA foam, or just the foam floor puzzle pieces to construct the armour out of, but on the drive, my papa suggested knee pads.  Lo and behold the first thing I see in the Dollar Store: Knee pads!!

I grabbed virtually everything left that I needed from my cosplay from the dollar store.  What I used for the armour is:

electrical tape

knee pads

hot glue

gardening wire (any wire should be fine? this wire was soft and bent easily, and not too thick or thin)

I fiddled around with how I wanted to cut out the knee pads to get the shape of the armour, and drew in where the details would go. Then I cute them!

Initially for the details, I wanted to carve them out.  That was much more difficult than I thought, and because the foam was so squishy it was just ripping and tearing, not the way I wanted.  So I built up the designs with the wire instead (which was originally purchased for the sword detailing, but came in handy for this instead!)

Though its a snapchat, this is actually a pretty good image of how I applied the wire.  I made one continuous strip of wire along the whole outside of the armour, then made the little squares. Then I did the outside of the shoulder again, since I didn’t find it thick enough with one piece.  Then I used the electrical tape to hold everything down.  I tried to smooth this out as much as possible, but then decided to cover the whole thing (in order to hopefully minimize the texture from each strip of tape, and to also cover the holes where the velcro straps originally sat).

Here it is, fully covered! (also the kind of wire I used!)  This was a super time consuming process.  I think the first one took me about 2-4 hours to do, but the second one was a little faster, probably closer to 2 hours.  Here’s how it sat on my shoulder!

Here’s both completed (and the neck tie)

Once I had both done, I spray painted them!

The tape lines were a little more visible BUT!! still looks pretty good

Then I took the velcro strips that came with the knee pads, and cut them so I was only left with the velcro.  I tried on my jacket, held the armour where I wanted it to sit, and marked it on my jacket with tailors chalk.  Then I sewed the velcro to the shoulder of the jacket!

Then i put the other side of the velcro on the one sewn on, and put the armour on over top, carefully peeling off the unsecured piece of velcro with the armour.  I outlined where the velcro sat in the armour, and then covered the rest of the underside of the armour in electrical tape, before hot glueing the velcro the the knee pad.

And voila! super light, surprisingly secure shoulder armour!