Prop making

I've been doing a lot of prop making for my cosplaying.  I have a total of 5 props that I have made, only one with the help of my dad.  The rest I've actually made on my own.  I'm going to outline my most recent one here in this post.  What is it you ask?  Why, it's Captain America's shield.  I made it rather cheaply, to be honest.  I used foam board and acrylic paint that only cost 37 cents a bottle.  That kind of thing.  I've got pictures of the whole process.  

This is what I used to outline the shield.  They are inexpensive wire wreath frames and some foam circles that I got at Michael's.  I think they added up to about $20 total.  And the foam board was $8 because I had to get the one that was actually a display board.  I did it this way because I tried to make my own compass with string and a pencil and it failed miserably.  

Drawing the star in the middle was kind of hard and required a little bit of mathing.  Well, it wasn't that hard but it did require mathing and my brain is only good at money math, not this kind of math.  But I got it figured out. 

I meant to take a picture with just the white paint but didn't get around to it.  I used the white paint for three reasons.  One, as you can see, the paint is a different shade of white from the poster board.  Two, I thought it would look weird if only part of the board was painted.  And three, I needed to cover up some pencil lines.  

Here you have the shield with the first coat of the red paint. 

This is the shield completely painted and ready to cut out.  I had to put SEVERAL coats of the red and had to do a lot of touching up with the paint because I kept going over lines and things like that.  

Then I had to cut the shield out.  This was a bitch, I will tell you.  Cutting foam board with a pocket knife is a real pain in the ass.  Cutting it with anything is a pain in the ass.  After I cut it out, I sanded the edges down the best that I could and then painted them red as well.  

Then I covered the shield with a clear lacquer to help protect it.  As I said, the acrylic paint I used was pretty cheap and it could flake off very easily.  And it also got very dirty very easily.  So I coated it with lacquer and don't really have to worry about that anymore.  

Finally I put the elastic straps on the back.  This one was trial and error on how to attach them.  I tried craft glue and staples and the first time it seemed to go okay, but then I found out I didn't put enough glue because the staples popped right out and the elastic came off.  The second time, though, I put more glue and more staples and they stayed just fine when I gave the glue ample amount of time to dry.  

I have also made a blaster and lightsaber for my Jedi costume, a martini to go along with my Howard Stark costume, and a goblet to go along with my Lady Christina costume.  Getting all of this to Dragon Con is going to be interesting for sure.