I embellished Zhang He’s gauntlets with real peacock eyes. The process is simple, but it requires some trickery that I only learned by messing up the first attempts. Read on for the details.

The art of patterning costume armor is difficult to teach. It requires a good understanding of how a 3-D shape can be formed from 2-D surfaces, which is best learned by experience. That said, I can share some tips to get you started. Read on.

Once upon a time, I attempted to make fiberglass armor and claws for a Zhang He costume. With time running out before Otakon, I revisited an idea that I had never thought would work for me – craft foam propmaking. I’d come across Amethyst Angel’s famous craft foam and styrene tutorial, but that technique and I just did not get along. First off, I didn’t like having to bend the piece properly in a single step. More importantly, hot glue hates me. It dribbles, burninates my fingers, and doesn’t seem to find a middle ground between having near zero holding power and warping the plastic laminate layer.

With inspiration from Yui’s amazing skills and lots of my own experiments, I came up with a foam crafting method that works for me.

Read on for the details.