#light bow tutorial

Let’s start by a list of what you will need:

1 foam board

1 wooden dowel

Stainless steel wire

Foam sheet

Duck tape! Or masking tape

4 cans of expansion foam

Mod Podge

White glue and paper

Exacto

Dremel

Sanding paper

Gold spray can and acrylic

Step 1 Research and drafting

The length of the bow will be influenced based on your height; I’m 5’5’’ so we made the bow 60 inch long.  We checked some archery site for recurve bow to know which length was better for us, and we decided to go with this height.  We could have picked bigger, but the Twilight bow looks smaller then Zelda and it was already big enough has it is xD So the length is up to you, pick whatever you prefer but do take your height in account.  Now look for references and make a draft of your bow!  The wooden dowel is about 19-20 inch with a handle, centered in the middle, of 5 inch long.  

Step 2 Making the armature

Use the foam board to start the armature for the ticker part of the bow.   Use the metal wire for the thinner part of the bow, meaning the end :V Duck tape everything together and repeat for the other side.  Note that the spike near the middle of the bow and the thing that creates the hole at the end of the bow, do not need armature for now has they will be crafted separately and added later.  Add small rectangles of foam board on the armature to add more grip.

Step 3 Make it look like a big blob :D

Doesn’t it look marvelous :D  So yeah, just add your expansion foam starting from the middle to the tips. To that point it might look like nothing but it will, trust me!  From that point you can use a copy of your draft (yes make a copy, you never know what can happen ) and trace the shape of the bow so you know where to cut.  From this point it’s a lot of sculpting and you will need to trace the bow shape more than one time.  

Step 4 Harm yourself with patience and sculpt

Sculpting the shapes is the longest step! It took about 2 month, not working everyday on it but almost. The exacto was use to remove most of the excess foam and to roughly sculpt the shapes.  One hard thing was to keep the bow straight, if by mistake you removed too much foam and the bow is curved, just add expansion foam again and retry.  When you are satisfied with the basic shape, use the dremel  to refine the shapes.  The dremel is super useful to make the cracks because it is more precise then the exacto! I highly suggest you to wear a mask when using the dremel, because it makes a lot of dust!

Step 5 Add the details

From that point you can add the spikes and the end thing of the bow (shown  by the arrows on second pic).  They only have a metal wire armature that you make a little longer so you can pin it on after they’ve been sculpted.  Add a little foam at the connection to solidify everything together and remove the excess and and smooth it! From that point, be super proud of yourself because the hardest part is done!  Note, to make the design near the middle of the bow, use foam sheets so it will be raised a little and you don’t have to sculpt that ;D

Step 6 Covering and painting

I don’t have any pictures between the two step so I’ll just explain it :V  You will notice that expansion foam does make a lot of holes, but not a worry.  Use mod podge to fill the holes and once it’s done, cover the whole thing with papier maché! Sand everything and cover it with mod podge. Sand it again until it is smooth enough! Once it’s done you can start painting! From that point, the paint is up to you, whether you want to use a glowing paint or not etc.  We painted everything with a gold spray can first and just used regular acrylic to make the yellow parts.  For the handle, we used a gold bias tape and just wrapped it around! Annnnnnnnnd it’s done!!!!