mistressheadly-blog

[mistressheadly-blog]

Injustice Wonder Woman Shield, Prime & Paint

So you've made an awesome shield!! Now how do I finish it? This tutorial will teach you how to prime, sand, paint and seal the job. What you'll need: - Gesso or Wood Glue or Plastidip - Black Sharpie - Sander or sandpaper of 40 or 80 grit - Different sized paintbrushes - Xacto Knife - Krylon or Liquitex Spray paint - Silver Rub N Buff - Masking Tape - Sealant In order to get a smooth surface ready for paining you need to prime your surface. Priming allows you to create a smooth surface to get the best results when it comes to painting. There are several ways on how to achieve this. I usually go with Liquitex Gesso. I get a big gallon of it at Michaels arts and crafts. You need to place several layers in order to have a thick enough surface to sand. I usually do at least 8 - 10 layers. The best way I gauge that I have enough layers is I make a mark with a black Sharpie on the surface. When the Mark is no longer seen then you've got a thick enough layer! It takes a long time to dry between layers, so I usually work on something else in the meantime. It drys faster in hotter weather so I've placed it outside on summer days. If you prime with Wood Glue, you only need to apply a smaller amount of layers, at least 2 or 3. It is also sandable, a trick is that when it dries you moisten your finger with water and rub the surface and it will smooth out. Wood Glue is transparent so you really can't see in in photos. Plastidip is a spray paint primer. You need to cover your surface well, as well as your work area and make sure to wear a dust mask. This is the quickest way to prime but the messiest, since it sprays all over. After you finish priming, get the sander! The sander is the quickest way of getting a smooth surface. If you used gesso you'll see brush marks and that needs to be smoothed out. I use different grits sandpaper and sand, sand, sand! This is the part I hate, it's tedious and tiring but it is a necessary step. I start with 80 grit and work my way up to smaller numbers. The smaller the grit number the rougher the grain of the paper, and tougher it is. The larger the number the smoother the sandpaper. The 80 grit allows you to get the obvious bumps and the larger grit papers gets the smaller crevices. I've sanded it so much before that I've peeled the primer and that's no good! Here's a photo of the shield primed and sanded. Now to paint! The shield needs be taped up on the parts that you do not want to color. So my first step was to paint the inner circle, so tape up everything else but that inner circle. spray one coat of the Liquitex Gold Spray Paint and let it dry. After it is dry, peel off the tape and be careful because if it is not fully dry it may peel up the spray paint. Now tape up the inner circle,stars as well as a thin edge around the border. The tape that is on the stars were cut with an exacto knife. Then Spray Paint it blue and let dry. Once again after the blue paint is dry go ahead and cover that up too with tape, leaving only the thin border exposed. This border will be painted red. Then the final result! Peel the tape of carefully off of the shield entirely. Then paint the stars using silver Rubb N Buff and the tip of your finger. Some of the spray paint may have lifted up, if this is the case spray the desired color onto a plastic surface and dip your paintbrush in and paint the damaged part. At this point you can weather your shield if you choose to, but I decided not to, I wanted to keep it as close as possible to the in game character. Now you need to seal your work so that it doesn't peel or come off at all! Use a sealer and either spray or paint that on, at least two coats and your done! If you have any comments, questions, or tips please comment below. Thanks!

[mistressheadly-blog]

Wonder Woman Injustice Shield

Hai everyone! Welcome to my first post and brand new tumblr!! I wanted to make this shield to go with my costume but I found it difficult finding tutorials on how to make this particular shield. This shield is not perfect but it was my first prop ever and I'm super proud of it! What you'll Need - 52 Gallon Brute Garbage can (or large EVA foam piece) - XL Sheet of Worbla. ( I get mine from yayahan.com) - Heat Gun - Scissors - Door handle - Adjustible strap - Bolts & nails - Strong Adhesive Glue (I used Gorilla Glue) - Pencil - Paper - Ruler - Different Sized Stars Stencil - Dremel Tool - Exacto Knife - Craft Foam First step is to always have a reference photo to glance back at. Accuracy is key! Sizing is the first thing you need to get down. Wonder Woman is an amazon, shes tall! Compared to me, I'm 5'4". Her shield as per some photo research seems to be the width of her shoulders and length of top of her shoulders to her waist. So i measured the width of my shoulders and length from shoulder to waist with a long ruler and jotted the numbers down, and drew those measurements on a large piece of paper, and made a circle of that width. I didn't have a protractor that large so I did the ol' tie a string of the same length to a pencil centered at the middle of the measurements to draw a perfect cirlce. Then I drew in the details to get a first look of ratio. I took this piece of paper and taped it to the side of the garbage can and used a silver sharpie and traced the circle on the can. I then busted out the Dremel tool, saftey googles and dust mask and cut the circle out. I used the lower speed setting because it is easier to control. Afterwards I changed the head of the dremel tool to the sander to buff the edges to be more even because it didn't come out perfect. PS. after completing the shield is when I realized that I could have just used EVA foam. So if you decide to go the more practical route, omit the garbage can and purchase EVA foam, and cut it out using a box cutter. I used my beloved Heat gun to heat the edges of the circle and the pressed it inwards to give it the classic shield shape. Do this several times over, because it is such a durable material it takes a bit of time to achieve. If you did this with EVA foam, you can still use a heat gun ( be careful it may burn it) or a hair dryer to mold the edges of the foam. Once it cooled and it has retained its shape, cut out two pieces of worbla a bit larger than the circle. The following is called the sandwich method. It is normally done with craft foam or EVA foam, so I was unsure about how the worbla would stick to the garbage can since it is a thick plastic. I slathered a bunch of glue onto one side of the plastic circle and heated up one of the sheets of worbla that was cut out earlier and stuck it onto the circle. I did the same thing for the other side and folded some of the excess worbla over the edge. If there is alot of excess of worbla its best to cut it off and save the scraps for something else. Here's the finished look. Now comes the difficult part! How to hold it! When you hold a shield you need to grip a handle and to have better control of it your forearm needs to attached too. My husband was awesome enough to find a extra metal shower curtain rod and cut it to size with a dremel tool and bend some excess metal to fit around the two sides of the curtain rod and screwed it into the circle with a nail and a screw on either side. You want the easy way out? then go buy a door handle from Home Depot and screw that on istead. Either way will work just fine! We measured the length of my hand to the middle of my forearm to determine where the forearm strap would go. we had extra adjustible straps so we used one and bolted that on too. He also covered it with some leather I had purchased to somewhat cover the handle and give padding to the piece that was screwed in. Also to give it a more decent look! He also used a bunch of Gorilla Glue to make sure that everything was in its place, because why the heck not? Yay! Now I can hold it! The difficult part is over! Naturally when you screw something in, you'll see the head of the screw on the other side, the front side. So i traced the inner circle twice that I drafted up before on worbla then cut it out. I cut two circles because I wanted something more durable, so I stuck the two sheets of worbla together and then I centered the smaller circle onto the middle of the larger circle. Now the screws have disappeared! Oooooo.. Magic! Now you've got a circle with a smaller circle on top of it which gives us, the inner circle on which the Wonder Woman "W" goes on. I drew the logo up on a piece of paper that I cut of the inner circle size to make sure it would fit and was even on all sides. This is a pretty simple step, once you drew up the "W" cut it out and trace it onto craft foam, then use the sandwich method to cover the logo in worbla. I used an exacto knife to cut out the inside of the "W". If the worbla starts to get to hard to cut, reheat it and it will soften. After that I heated the entire backside of the "W" and stuck it onto the inner circle. Important: Make sure the "W" that you stick on is facing the correct direction now that you have the handle and strap to hold it by. You wouldn't want to stick it upside down by accident. You can make a mark at the top of the circle for your own reference to show the correct placement of the "W" Almost done! It's all about the details! The last thing that is missing are the 8 stars that go on the outer edge and around the shield. I went to Jo-Anne's Fabric and Craft store and purchased a star stencil. This stencil has 5 different sized stars on it which you can trace onto foam with a pencil. Find the best star that would fit the edge of your shield then make 8 copies onto foam. Follow with the sandwich method using worbla. Draw on your shield with a marker the placement of the stars to make sure they come out even on each side. Heat the back of each star and place onto the shield. Check yourself out in the mirror!! Gaze upon your completed shield!! My next tutorial will be about how to prime, sand and paint this bad boy! let me know of questions you may have or advice! Hope this helped!