#diadhank

Materials:

Styrene (~0.06 inch)

Masking Tape

Marker

Aluminum fool

Sculpey

Black acrylic paint

Paintbrushes

Gold spray paint

Craft foam

Superglue

Hairdryer or heat gun

Sandpaper in various grits

Dremmel and/or small drill

Angle brackets x2

Hammer

Nuts x5

Bolts x5 (one long and four short)

Stickyback Velcro

I started by looking at screencaps and making a template in Paint.net (any photo-editing program will work). Then I printed it out at a few different sizes until I liked the size relative to my arm.

Next, I taped the template to a sheet of styrene..

...and cut out the outline as accurately as I could. Thick styrene is tough, but still possible to cut through. I sanded down the rough edges with sandpaper (I believe I used 60, 150, and 220 grit).

Next was a little bit of trial and error. I tried using craft foam to make the raised parts, but that looked really sloppy. So I ended up using oven-bake Sculpey clay. Since I couldn’t put the styrene or paper template in the oven, but I still wanted the raised parts to be as accurate as possible, here’s what I figured out: foil!

I laid foil down over my styrene wing and pressed it down so I could clearly see the shape (and then outlined it in Sharpie for good measure).

After my craft foam attempt, I had this outline left over (you can achieve this by punching out the outline with a craft knife or parer knife). So I lined it up with my foil-covered outline...

...and transferred the outline to the foil. I ended up coloring the negative spaces blue so that I’d know they were supposed to be empty.

Now the time-consuming part: I then started filling in the spaces with Sculpey, designing the pattern right on top of the foil. S

Since foil is safe to go in the oven, you can just separate it from the styrene and put it (and the sculpey) straight in to bake.

When you’re done, you get something like this!

~REPEAT TWO MORE TIMES~ since the Diadhank has three wings.

Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures of this. But after sanding the scupley AND the styrene, I painted them black. Then I thoroughly painted the sculpey with gold spray paint, leaving no gaps. Then I superglued the gold scupley onto the black styrene, and lightly sprayed the whole thing with gold spray paint. That leaves some of the black paint visible and gives them a very 3D look (it’s a super easy alternative to shading or antiquing). 

Giving us....

And here’s all three:

This part was by far the trickiest, so there’s plenty of room for modifying. I used newspaper to pattern out the gauntlet, then drew the pattern on a sheet of styrene.

Using a hairdryer, I warped the plastic so that it would curve (if you try to permanently bend styrene without heat-morphing it, it will probably crack and break apart. I learned this the hard way with my Marik armbands :’D). Also, rolling it up overnight will help morph it into a curve.

I ended up securing it with a lace: I drilled holes down each side and then wound a shoelace through them. Also, I used a Dremmel to carve in the ridges at the top and bottom. Then I sanded it and painted it black. (all this shows up in later pictures).

I wanted the wings to be collapsible, so I drilled a hole through the three wings and put a long bolt through them, then secured it with a nut. That way, they could swivel open and closed. Although, in screencaps, the topmost wing does NOT move. So I knew that was the one that would be secured to the gauntlet.

To attach the wings to the gauntlet, I used two angle brackets. I had to bend one side of them (by hitting it with a hammer) to get it to conform to the gauntlet’s curve. Be careful if you do that.

(finally, I remembered to take a picture!) basically, I used small bolts and nuts to secure the angle bracket in place. I basically held up the gauntlet, bracket, and wings together until I like their position, then marked the position of the brackets’ holes and then drilled them out. As you can see, I added thin craft foam to pad the inside and made it more comfortable. Here’s one attached.

And here it is from the top, with one bracket in place. Part of the sculpey design snapped off while I was putting in the bolts, but I was able to superglue it back on.

And finally, I laced it back up and used the foil method to make the eye design on the gauntlet.

And here it is! I ended up spraypainting the whole thing and then going back later to antique it with black paint.

To get the wings to stay in place when they were open or closed (since only one was attach to the gauntlet, the others could swing freely on the one bolt), I use little stickyback velcro patches to keep them in place. That way, they held the position I wanted, but the wings could easily be moved.

...And I had to do a cosplay test at midnight when I finished it. 8D