My first worbla order!

Hi there! ~

I decided to make a quick post because I'm just too excited about finally buying some worbla for the first time to use for my cosplay making! I needed it for a school project *coughimakecosplaysinschoolcough* so I finally got a reason excuse? to fork out my limited money and buy some of this everyone-swears-to-the-cosplay-gods-by-it material!

In case you don't know what worbla is it's a kind of thermoplastic that is basically the holy grail for all cosplayers when it comes to making armors, weapon props etc. Worbla can be heated with a heat gun, for example, and then shaped into the desired form. The best part with worbla is that it's non-toxic, easy to use and you get almost no waste because it can be reheated and reshaped countless times!

I want to apologize for the horrible yellow lighting and thus crappier-than-usual photo quality. I took these photos on the morning but because of the cloudy weather –and the increasing effects of polar night– there wasn't enough daylight coming in from the window. I had to rely on my really crummy apartment lights... ._.

Newly arrived, unopened XS sized roll of worbla! o/

I placed my order on a German site called mycostumes.de (yes, that's where you can buy worbla, along with more cosplay stuff!) and that's because even though you can nowadays buy worbla directly from Sweden or Finland I thought that the prices were still a bit better on the German site and, well, the shipping price was almost better too – it's worth it if you're at least two people ordering! The shipping was fast and efficient as well. I received my order within one week and it was securely packaged so yeah, I have no complaints. 10/10 would order again!

Worbla is bought in rolled sheets of varying sizes. Worbla is also not just one single product – there's actually a little family of different kinds of worbla! The most well-known is the original "gingerbread-colored" worbla called Worbla's Finest Art (WFA), but there's also a newly released black worbla called Worbla's Black Art (WBA)! A transparent type of worbla known as Worbla's Transpa Art (WTA) is available as well and hey, let's not forget the worbla pellets called Worbla's Deco Art (WDA).

The sizes are as follows:
XS Size - 25 cm x 37,5 cm
S Size - 50 cm x 37,5 cm
M Size - 75 cm x 50 cm
L Size - 75 cm x 100 cm
XL Size - 100 cm x 150 cm

I bought two L sized sheets of black worbla as well as XS and M sized sheets of the normal worbla. I also bought a sample pack with test pieces (even smaller than XS size!) of all the different worbla products. The sample pack and the M sized worbla sheet I bought for a friend though, so those I won't be using myself.

I took this photo as a visual size reference and comparison.
Starting from the left: XS size, M size and L size.

This is to show of the thickness.
note: the black worbla is actually two sheets rolled together!

I haven't tried using these yet but as far as I know one of the main differences between the black worbla and the normal worbla is that the black one is smoother – a smoother surface to start with means less sanding and priming to do to get rid of the typical worbla texture! Another advantage that the new black worbla has over the "gingerbread worbla" is that black is a more discreet and multi-use color (it goes with everything! says the goth) so yeah, when the paint on your costume eventually wears off then the black worbla will be more easily forgiven because it will still look cool, hahah.

I was trying to show the surface texture here...

... and here. Just for comparison. :)

I'm really stoked to finally get to make some armored cosplays and take the next step on the cosplay adventure ladder! I hope I can make some good-looking creations with this magic stuff, haha. The main drawback of worbla is that it is expensive so yeah, I don't want to overheat these precious puppies and ruin them. *sobs* I'm gonna be careful!
Thankfully the activation heat is around 90 °C, so it's not anything horribly warm that would need hardcore equipment to achieve. I'm really looking forward to find out what you can make with worbla – it seems like the possibilities could be close to endless!

This is the sample pack. The bag of pellets is the Worbla's Deco Art.

All three different worbla sheets were in it, sample sized!
From left to right: Worbla's Finest Art, Worbla's Transpa Art and Worbla's Black Art.

Size comparison photo of the sample sheet size versus my Nokia cellphone. lol

Before I got to see (and touch) worbla sheets for the first time I had somehow gotten the impression that they would be thinner and less rigid. I don't know why I got this picture in my head because it is a thermoplastic after all and I've worked with polystyrene sheets before so, yeah.

I also want to mention that worbla has a shiny side and said side is the "glue side" which makes it possible for it to stick to itself and other materials because of the natural adhesive, which activates when it's heated. Worbla will stick itself to wood, metal, fabric, foam etc but sometimes additional glue might be needed just to be on the safe side.

Worbla information paper that came with my order.

When I start to actually use my worbla sheets (which will be soon ~) I might make some sort of follow-up post about what I find out – more comparisons between black and normal worbla etc. So yeah, does this sound interesting? x) Drop me a comment if you'd like to hear about my worbla discoveries on this blog because, err, then I'd be one helluvalot more likely to make it happen! o/

Shiro Samurai says baibai!
Thanks for reading!

More armors for Masamune

 Hello everyone!

Back on 13th February I started another armor making process for Masamune, this time his upper leg armor pieces.

Character reference.

I decided to roll with polystyrene once again and so I did some measuring and cut out two fitting pieces. I noticed after cutting that even though they had the right measures they weren't perfectly straight – oh well, it's not too bad...

Cut out polystyrene pieces.

Originally I had planned to make the armor out of several separate pieces –layered over each other– but I then remembered the amount of gluing failures I've done earlier with this plastic so I thought I'd do it another way – an easier way. So, with the pieces cut out I took a measuring tape and measured where each "edge line" would be and then just divided the length of the piece with the number of lines and started marking with a pencil.

Pencil marks added and yes, I used the knife box as a ruler.

On 5th April I decided to try if my idea would work or not – basically applying a line of hot glue on the lines I had drawn and then heat-shaping the polystyrene into the right shape. I had been going back and forth thinking if this would even work and being worried that the hot glue would get sticky again because of the heating; I figured that the only way out was to try it on a scrap piece.
But before the hot glue experimenting I wanted to check if I could cut a line into the plastic for the attachment purpose – basically a hole to pull the ties through. I had no proper tools for this so I tried with a kitchen knife. I had to use quite a lot of pressure and I managed to cut pretty deep into the plastic but on the other side it didn't go all the way through so yeah, in other words it didn't work out.

The side I cut on.

The backside. Didn't go through. :(

With that tried and tested I had to go ask stepdad for better tools; if nothing else I'll use the drill he has but maybe if there was something that would do a line instead of a hole it would be more convenient.
Well well, now back to the gluing – I took a scrap piece, heated the glue gun and carefully applied a thin line as evenly as I could manage.

I know it's beautifully straight. Not.

When the glue had cooled down I carefully tried to bend the plastic and the glue moved with it – no cracking or loosening or anything! The hot glue didn't turn liquid-ish again; it didn't move even when I was heating the side it was applied on. Only thing was that at the very edges a super small bit of glue softened and thus glued onto my glove so eh, I guess it could turn sticky again if heated enough or too close...
Oh well, I took the heat gun and shaped it the same way I would shape the actual pieces.

Success!

With confidence and proof that it would, hopefully, work as envisioned I began to work on the actual armor pieces. Next in line was to do five glue lines. Slowly. Carefully. Caaaaaaarefullyyyyyyyyyy.

One done, four to go!

It was more of a pain than one would think – I ended up with aching shoulders because I was doing it with my head almost in level with the table and the glue gun arm held up. Also constantly having to keep the same pressure on the glue gun's trigger (reason: have the glue come out as evenly as possible at all times) made my hand hurt and cramp; when I was working on the second armor piece's final lines it was hard to keep my hand steady, because of the shaking that occured when trying to keep the same pressure, aka not moving my hand from the trigger. It wasn't the best gluing experience but I still think it turned out pretty okay.
At some point I think the glue gun got too hot because the glue just flowed out without me even trying to get it out and it did this "glue bump - line - glue bump - line" pattern that was just not what I wanted so I took it off for a while to cool down. Also, when the "mouth"/tip of the hot glue gun accidentally touched the polystyrene it melted very slightly. Actually, I ended up noticing that you could use the glue gun even when it was not plugged because it took quite a while to cool down... xD

One armor piece done.

One 7th April I heat-shaped the armor pieces. It all went well except that it wasn't the easiest to get both pieces to bend an equal amount, but after some tries it worked out alright. The only mishap that happened was that while I was heating one of the armor pieces I accidentally moved my arm over a spot with a glue line and some of the glue stuck on my glove. It wasn't too bad though, I just grabbed some paper, wiped off the smeared mess on the armor and poked the remaining semi-hard glue back in place with my nail. No harm done.

One armor piece shaped.

I finished these armors today on 15th April. I had gone to mom's place because I needed to use the drill and the spray paints were there as well. I went to ask stepdad for advice about the drilling and after some brainstorming we agreed that the best approach to get holes in these things –for the attachment elastic bands– was to do several small holes in a row. Actually he did the measuring and drilling for me because one has to be very careful and well, he's kind and I'm derp.

Notice the pencil markings at the left and right corners.

Holes drilled.

Closer view of the holes.

Stepdad then went to fetch the utility knife so that we could clean up the drill holes and make room for the elastic ribbon to pass through. He also did the cutting part.

Cutting time ~

Trimmed hole.

Next step was for me to do the sanding. I used some 120 grit sand paper to even out the holes a bit more, you know, to make it less obvious that there were a lot of small drill holes. I also sanded all around the pieces to nicen up the raw cutting edges I made back when I cut these things out.

Sanding time ~

With that done I figured it wouldn't hurt to use some very fine grit sand paper to scratch the surface of the plastic very slightly to get it to take in the coming spray paint a bit better. Here we go!

My sand paper of choice.

Sanded surface.

Okay, so now my armor pieces had slight sanding dust on them. The thing to do now was to take some paper tissue, wet it with a slight amount of turbentine and cleanse the plastic by wiping it carefully. I avoided touching the hot glue decorations.

Turbentine.

So with the surface free from sanding dust, fingerprints and such it was time for the actual painting job. I used a semi-gloss black spray paint and sprayed away. Outside, of course, in a well ventilated area; this thing is not fun to inhale a lot of.

Spray paint coating recently added.

While I watched the spray paint dry I noticed these unsightly bubbles that had formed on one of the armors. I don't know where they came from but I certainly wasn't planning on letting them reside on my black goodness! I just took a paper tissue and wiped the surface above the bubbles. The bubbles went with it along with some paint that had not been set yet. I just repainted the wiped spots afterwards.

I don't like what I see...

... that's better.

Now I just had to play the waiting game and add new coats of paint when the earlier ones had dried. When the front was painted I turned the armors and painted the backside; when these had dried I took them inside and went to fetch the elastic ribbon that I'd use for attaching these things to my legs. Yeah, I cut four pieces of some black elastic and secured the ends with a zigzag stitch.

It's important to zigzag!

I then took one of the elastics at a time and started threading them through the holes in the armor and sewing them on. I quickly noticed that it was possible to sew the elastic on at one side with the sewing machine – saves time!

Sewing elastic in place.

What I also noticed was that to fasten the elastic on the opposite side was close to a physical impossibility – if you wanted to do it with the machine, that is. So, in other words, I just sewed one end of each elastic onto the armor by machine. Like this:

At this point I had to leave and go back to my apartment, but before I left I took with me some items for handsewing and some black thread. At home I sewed on the other end of the elastic by hand. I had to keep the stretch tight with one hand and sew on the elastic with the other but it all went well.

Sometimes handsewing is convenient...

Armors done I quickly put on my Masamune cosplay pants and put on the thigh armors – I'm surprised it actually works as well as it does! Sure that it doesn't look the most impressive ever but I'm satisfied with the results.

Quick armor test.

One thing's for sure though, when I finish this cosplay and wear it out to an anime convention I will have problems sitting down because of all the armors... and I will need help to dress. Outch.

Yeah, that's it yo! See you later alligator!

Masamune arm guards pt.2

I guess no one remembers how I back in April this year started working on Masamune's arm guards? Feels like so long time ago, heh. But hey, guess what? Today on 22 September I finally finished them! .. or well, sort of.

Needless to say I went to mom's place today and started painting!

This is where I stopped last time and thus started with today

And of course I need dem references:

Reference picture

Now I checked several references of Masamune and noticed that the patterns on his arm guards change on pretty much every picture; sometimes they were these softer "waves" and sometimes more like jagged lighting bolts. I decided to go with the more wavy approach. Oh, and I just free-hand painted all the designs instead of doing exactly like they were on a specific picture.

I used a metallic gold colored paint. When I started painting it didn't look like it would turn out good.. but luckily when the paint dried it went from crappy looking to pretty fabulous. Yes!

Painting in progress ~
You can see here that parts of it has started to dry and turn goldish and shiny

And here's some more painting progress pictures!

To the left is a sort-of-dry guard and on the right an unfinished one

The painting mission didn't take very long and they dried surprisingly quick too. This is what all pieces looked like after I had added the golden "waves" to them:

I let them dry for a while more -just to be on the safe side- and a little bit later I figured I could paint the undersides black so that, eh, if anyone would catch a glimpse of them when I'm wearing this cosplay at least the color would be black. Not so much more to do than grab the black paint can (it's actually paint for walls but who cares, still paint!) and start painting! One, two, three, go!

The piece closer to the paint can has been painted and the one farther away is still its original color - dark blue

I finished painting all undersides black and left them to dry at mom's place; I had to go back home to my own apartment at some point ya know. They will be dry the next time I go there and with that the arm guards should be finished unless something crappy happens. You won't get any try-them-on pictures now because I don't have any (and it's hard to put them on alone, yes, I tried) but you'll get to see them worn whenever I do either a second "this is what I have so far!" post or at the very least when I do the cosplay preview or a test-run photoshoot or something.

Bye ~

Samurai style torso armor

On 24th June I started working on the torso armor for Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi's Souji Okita.

Character reference

I decided to go with polystyrene even though I had a not-that-good experience with it earlier. I think I've learned some things about the material along the bad experience as well as the successful one. A bit wiser from earlier tries I thought polystyrene should be suitable for Okita's torso armor. I decided to do the armor similar to kendo armor, this because the backside and shoulders aren't shown anyway and it has pretty much the same shape.

Kendo armor - do

So I picked up my polystyrene sheet roll and started taking some measures and drawing on it. I drew one of the sides free-hand and used baking paper lol as a pattern to trace on and get the other side identical to the first.

Tracing

I must say cutting polystyrene -at least the width I have- is quite hellish.. especially curves.

Soon finished cutting

After cutting it out I went in front of the mirror and bended it over my body and OH GOD I DON'T EVEN. While the length and width were fine I had completely screwed up the "arm hole"/side curving and the placement of those two rising front.. things-or-whatever-they-are. I wondered why in hell I hadn't checked the fit in front of the mirror before cutting it out..? ._. Needless to say I couldn't use this one so I had to make another. I repeated the procedure with the necessary changes added. When I was done I had this:

Seems much better

I tried this one in front of the mirror and success!

After that I went up to the attic to check for any possible close-enough fabrics for the armor's upper pattern. I didn't found anything very similar but I thought this one snake skin-ish fabric was pretty cool for it. It has a nice sheen too and should look pretty sweet with the red spray paint under it. I didn't work on the armor any more for that day after getting the fabric.

Today (26th June) I continued working on the armor. The first thing I did was cut out a test piece of the fabric and take a scrap piece of polystyrene and well, hot glue the fabric on it to test if it would stick and stay.

Sits like a mountain, success!

Then I went ahead and made a pattern of the armor's upper part, where I wanted the fabric to be.

Pattern cut out

Fabric cut out

Next it was time to sand around the edges of the whole armor to get them nicer. After that was done I drilled holes into the armor for the ties because hey, I need to put it on somehow!

Armor after sanding edges and drilling holes into it

Luckily I happened to have almost a full can of red spray paint over from like... uh, 4 years ago when I did my first cosplay - Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach. I had used red spray paint for his sword chain thingy and now I got to use it again for Okita's armor. So with the spray paint at hand I went outside, put up a working table and used a cardboard piece as cover and sprayed.  Many coats of paint later I had this:

I didn't waste much paint on the upper part because it would be covered anyway..

I let it dry for a few hours just in case and took it inside. While inside I noticed the armor had some sort of spray paint dust on it so I wiped it clean with a wet kitchen paper. After that I started working on attaching the fabric to the armor. The hot glue gun was my friend.

After hot gluing the front

Preparations for gluing the back

A part of the backside hot glued

I must say the backside was a bitch to glue. I burned my fingers more times than I remembered to count and I got hot glue strings everywhere and agjdsj. The backside isn't the prettiest but who cares because it will be against my body and unseen anyway... I let the hot glue dry and then I poked holes into those front things that had been covered in fabric.

le hole

With the hot glue dry I took my metallic golden paint and started painting on top of the glue to get the border thing Okita has on his armor.

Paint paint paint paint...

It took forever because I was being super careful and shit. I noticed the paint was pretty awesome because when you painted it on it seemed this dull super light gold sort-of-pankake-dough color but when it dried it started turning into a real gold color, cool!

When the paint had dried I made the edge border around the armor's upper part with hot glue.

Glue glue glue glue...

... and paint paint paint paint some more.

The paint took some time to dry completely so meanwhile I watched some Digimon Adventure to make the waiting time go by faster. I'm watching the first season for nostalgic reasons, ah. <3 And besides as a kid I never saw all episodes anyway...

When the golden paint finally had dried I just had to put on the ties and call it done!

Tadaah!

It's not 100% accurate but fair enough, neh? ;) You'll get to see it worn and in action soon enough because I will do an Okita preview before Skecon!