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There have been many emails and questions about my Art Nouveau Nightmare Moon outfit for the My Little Pony Project.

I was planning a very detailed diy post, alas one of my camera cards went missing. The card that I lost happened to be the one with all of my photos . Luckily I did take a few snaps on my iphone so here’s a quick and dirty diy armor tutorial!

What you’ll need?

• Craft Foam (Foamies) sheets
• Tracing paper (or regular paper)
• Pins
• Pen/Pencil
• Exacto knife/scissors
• Hot glue
• wig head & tubes (to keep shape of item)
• various acrylic textile paints & brushes
• Velcro or snaps (some kind of attachment method

• Using the paper pattern pieces, pin them down to the foam, and use your pen or pencil to trace. This helps the pattern from shifting.
• To make the most out of your foam sheets; arrange and pin various pieces on 1 sheet so you can get as many pieces as possible.
• Use your exacto knife to cut all of these pieces out. Cut them over a cutting mat or cardboard as you will need to apply pressure.
• Pin the pieces in the correct place and then carefully hot glue all of these pieces together.

IV. Shaping

• My helmet was made from 2 pieces (one mirrored) so that I could glue it together at an angle. I used the hot glue to fill in the gap, so it would be easy to keep the shape.
• If you use hot glue, don’t use heat to shape the foam. Use a wig head or papertowel rolls for the arm/legs. I had boot stands on hand for my leg pieces.
• You can go in with the hot glue gun to add small details (instead of cutting out tons of small pieces). I used it to give my helmet lots of small details and more dimension.
• I let all of these pieces set into shape over night.

V. Painting

To Seal or not Seal? That is the big question.

Most craft foam armor masters tell you to seal the foam with Elmers glue. Why? It helps paint adhere to the surface better.

Did I seal mine? I didn’t. I needed to shave off time, so I applied acrylic textile paint with dry brush.

If you want to get more realistic coloring, or make the armor last more than the 2-4times I’m going to use mine, SEAL your pieces before painting.

So how did I go about painting these?

I decided on using 4 metallic textile acrylic paint colors. I used Indigo for shadows, Metallic blue as the base, Metallic Violet as the gradient, and Pewter as the highlight color. These four colors helped me achieve the gradient look.

You should also consider HOW the item would look if it were metal. If light hit the object, what would shine and what would be shaded. Sometimes it helps to put the item on so you can visualize it better.

• With dry brushes, I painted my blue metallic textile paint onto the entire piece.
• Use a small brush to get into small details.
• Be sure to paint the back of the piece as well! Some of my pieces could be seen from the back, so I also painted them.
• After the first 2 coats of the base metallic blue were laid, I let it sit for about 20 minutes to dry.
• I then went back with the purple to help create the gradient.
• Shadows and hi-lights were done last with very small brushes. Most of these were applied in corners or edges on the layers.
• I didn’t use anything to seal this paint, but it’s a good idea.

What to look out for?

Don’t use spray paint. A lot of spray paint will eat through the foam.

VI. Final Touches

For my attachments on the arms and legs, I used regular snaps. Since the pieces were large, I made tabs long enough to overlap.

For the helmet, I simply bobby pinned it to my wig.

I know there’s question about the horn and the flowers, but they were actually separate pieces.
The hole I made in the helmet was just slightly smaller than the horn, so I was able to twist it into place with out gluing it down. I simply added some foam to the base so that the horn wouldn’t hurt when it rested on my head.

I didn’t want to actually attach the horn since I have other uses for this horn. It was also the same horn from my Gothicorn outfit, I just gave it a new paint job.

As for the flowers, they were part of a separate Art Nouveau project I was doing. They were simply clips that I attached to my wig near the neck base of my helmet piece. This made it look like one piece. I will be posting how I made those as well.

So with a few tricks of placement this is what I ended up with:

As you can see the hand parts of my arm braces didn’t flex. If you want those to flex, I suggest making seperate pieces that are joined or attached on elastic so it can move with out tearing the arm piece.

Easy right? This is definitely a first timer version of foam armor. I think next time I would love to do something more like this:

source: DonneAnonyme on DA

Well that’s it! I hope it helped all of you with questions. If not feel free to email me!