Shields up! The Krafting Nerd Makes Cosplay Shields Part 1

With the end of major restrictions from the pandemic in sight, it looks like the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire will be a go in August.  The enabler-in-chief, better known as my lovely wife, purchased weekend passes for my daughter and me. That promptly brought up questions of what to wear.

The theme for the weekend we are going is Fantasy and Fairies, so it seemed a perfect opportunity for some cosplay.  The monkey (I've been calling her that since she was three) decided she wanted to do an OC cosplay of her current D&D character, Rosie.  Keeping the D&D theme, I decided to cosplay a cleric of Moradin.  

 Rosie is a druid, who carries her father's shield and mace. In true Disney fashion, her father is dead and these are some of the few things she has to remind her of him.  Anyway, I needed to make a shield, and since we might take these cosplays to a con, the shield need to be con safe, which meant EVA foam. I figured I would make one for my cleric as well

The monkey said Rosie's shield was round, I decided the cleric would carry a teardrop shaped shield. I was concerned that EVA on its own would be too floppy, so I wanted to make a core of something rigid. But what?  Thin plywood?  Thin plastic?  Then I looked over at the pile of Amazon boxes waiting to go into the recycling bin.  Perfect!

I cut out two layers of the appropriate shapes and glued them together.  How did I determine the appropriate shape you ask?  I used a Scottish targe (round shield) I made for a claymore and targe class I took a few years ago.  For the teardrop shield, I just added a triangle to the round shield.    

Before glueing, I used the layers as a guide to cut out two layers of EVA foam.  Floor mats from Harbor Freight are a good source of EVA foam, especially if your project is just a one off.

Then I slathered the outside of the core in Barge cement. You should wear a respirator and work in a well ventilated area, this stuff gives off some horrible fumes.  I gave the foam the same treatment.



Once the cement was cured, I sandwiched the cardboard cores with the foam layers and piled on some weights while the cement fully bonded.




Once everything was all stuck together, I realized my cunning plan had a flaw.


You can clearly see the carboard core.  No amount of PlastiDip is going to cover that!  What to do?

Wooden shields sometimes had metal rims, maybe I can do that?  Luckily, I have a whole bunch of thing EVA foam.  This is the stuff that seems to have taken the place of construction paper in some kid crafting classes.  I cut strips that were about 4 inches wide and hot glued them in place.  



I have another problem, which is how to cover the seams in the foam edging.  Brackets!  Strips about 1 inch wide and 5 inches long, hot glued over the seams.




 Part 2 https://kraftingnerd.blogspot.com/2021/06/shields-up-krafting-nerd-makes-cosplay_13.html 

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Shields up! The Krafting Nerd Makes Cosplay Shields, part 2

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 Once I had the foam glued to the core, I had what people call a blank.  It was shield shaped, but had no character.  Eventually, Rosie's shield would get flowers painted on it and the cleric shield will get they symbol of Moradin painted on it, but first I had to give them some texture. The cool thing about foam is that it can be cut, carved and burned by enterprising nerds to mimic all sorts of materials.  In this case, I was going for wood planks. Using a 2x4 as guide, I scored lines in the foam with an exacto knife.  Then, using a Sharpie, I drew lines to simulate wood grain.  I took a soldering iron and traced the score marks and lines.  This melts the foam abit to make them pop out. Now that I had texture, I needed to figure out how to attach a handle and arm strap.  On a real shield, the strap and handle would be riveted or bolted in place.  Since this is a cosplay shield, I wasn't going to do that, but I could mimic it in foam. ...
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