There WILL be gay shenanigans here

Money cost (USD): 2 belts for a total of ≈5 from Savers, fanny pack (for the buckle) for 2.99 also from Savers, sheet of foam for 2.29 from Michaels, tube of e600 for 5.49 also from Michaels as well as a thing of gold paint for 2.99. Total: 18.76 w/o tax

Time cost: <5 hours (a relatively quick project for me lol)

What I’d do differently next time (I plan to make a few more iterations of this to try other stuff & improve the final product)

find something better to glue the foam to the belt with (I’ll probably use rubber cement with one of those brush applicators) (I used mod podge this time lol, it actually worked pretty well)

try on the base belt at the store (this one is pretty tight around the waist and I had to extend it to go around the buckle)

buy cheaper foam (this time I got fancy gold foam which I ended up paining over anyway. I won’t actually buy more foam tho, bc I still have a lot of gold left over)

maybe find a different way to get a buckle? (I like the fanny pack and I’ll definitely use it for something, but I don’t wanna have to do that every time, yk?)

hide the seams in the foam better

use a knife to cut out the foam instead of scissors (I wonder if you can get foam with a grid painted on it…?)

maybe make the top and bottom strips foam as well (they’re leather this time, although I like the leather it would be easier to cut out the foam if they were attached. But that still leaves the seam issue…)

maybe try fabric over foam, that seems to be what they did on the actual costume pieces for the show to hide the seams (the issue would be getting the fabric to work with all the small details, as well as just finding gold fabric lol)

maybe buy a different gold paint bc one is called “Emperor’s Gold” and how could I resist that lmao