hey! I found you because I was contemplating a tangled cosplay and saw that you were doing grand magic games erza, which is a costume i really want to do and was wonder if for the armor you used craft foam and if so how you formed it? especially on the gauntlet finger pieces! thank you!
Hi there!I’ve had a few notes on my gloves/gauntlets so I thought I’d make this public. I did use craft foam for all of the armor bits!
The elbow guards are 5mm foam and they’re two separate pieces glued together in the center.
The gauntlets ( the forearm pieces ) are tubes that are slightly wider at the top. I couldn’t figure out a way to have them fitted and not gap at the closures ( trust me, I wasted a LOT of craft foam trying different methods. DX ) so they’re just enclosed tubes. the seam of the tube is covered by the front center panel. I have to squeeeeeeeze my hands through and wiggle them out…but I’m pretty happy with how they look when they’re on!The gloves are synthetic leather gloves that I got off ebay. I looked at a lot of pictures of knight and fantasy armored glove styles ( and Erza’s, of course ) and just had to figure out the layering of the pieces to be able to retain the flexibility and movement. A lot of reproduction pieces have a 4th piece over the first joint but Erza’s fingers only have 3, so that’s how I went about it. Typically, the corners would be attached to allow movement but since it’s not visible in the illustrations, I didn’t know how to do it, and craft foam isn’t the best for poking holes through and being confident that it won’t rip, I just glued them down.
You can see all the pieces here and here .
I initially cut out 10 of each piece ( top, bottom, middle ) and then trimmed them up where needed for the length or width. ( Make sure you do this OVER the glove…unless it’s a skin tight glove…not recommended, you’ll see why later ), the fabric is going to add some extra width and length to the fingers. The only one that was significantly different were the pinky and thumb, in which case, once I trimmed one down, I just traced and trimmed off the ones for the other hand. When I cut out the pieces, I folded them in half and just squeezed along the edge for the creasing.
I modge podged all the craft foam bits 3x and then spraypainted with Krylon Metallic Silver. After they were dried, I put a glove on, figured out placement for the pieces and hot glued them onto the glove ( which is why you wouldn’t want to use a thin nylon glove…OUCH :| ). When I glued the bits on, I didn’t glue all the way to the top edge of the second or lowest piece. Because they overlap the next one, you want those parts to maintain some allowance for movement. And it worked! Honestly, I can pick up things, use my camera, brush my hair, hold utensils, use the computer….whatever! I didn’t armor the underside though, as this would’ve really impeded the movement, though I do plan on doing a little extra detailing there so it doesn’t look like a plain glove…which I’ll share When I’m done.
Hope that was helpful! :)
Oh. Ps. The gloves aren't attached to the gauntlets. I did this purposely because 1) It would probably make it harder to put the gauntlets on...and 2) her GMG gauntlets vary from her Heart Kreuz v1 or v2 so this way I can use the gloves for the other versions and swap up the gauntlets. :3