There has been a terrible accident in my house. A couch (or something) has exploded in the cosplay room.

There is soft black shrapnel in all the nooks and crannies and bits of foam flotsam are appearing all over the house. Thankfully, no one was hurt.

Creativity and construction are wonderful and amazing, but also messy. Very, very messy.

So what’s the story?  Well, there is some serious armor-making going on.  Coming off a 3rd place award for her Hiro Hamada cosplay:

Cosplay daughter is deep into the construction of Hiro’s supersuit.

I’d be flummoxed on where to even begin.  But cosplay daughter knows how to work the online tutorials, how to advocate successfully for tools and materials and what’s more (after the Long Fall Boot odyssey) she’s operating with an enhanced tolerance for the failure of prototypes and the need to refine methods and approaches.

To build this thing, she REALLY needs a lifecast of her head and body. (You know, a full body plaster cast). Talk about messy.

In the absence of that, though, she took one of the styrofoam heads that she uses for styling wigs and covered it in enough of her gamer-girl beanies to get it to the appropriate head size to match her own head. Then, one evening, I was watching an old John Cusak film in the library, and she appeared in the doorway, completely covered in plastic wrap.

“Mom?” she said,  “Will you cover me in this painter’s tape?”

The life of a cosplay Mom means that one takes this sort of request in stride.  I paused the movie and wrapped my daughter in blue tape over the plastic wrap.  Which she then cut carefully in out of the way places et Voila! patterns for the armor.

(I’m SO sure I was neither this creative nor this adventurous at age 16).

and…… there you have it. Having successfully advocated to the correct friend for a heat gun for Christmas (thanks Novio!) and to me for foam mats, she was ready to set up an armory in the craft room.  If you look closely at the photo, you’ll see the early versions of the breastplate and kneepads. But of course, the real challenge is the helmet.

I’d love to post a photo of helmet attempt #1, but she was so unhappy with it that she took it apart.  (Boot lessons or no, she’s still a perfectionist).

Many hours and innumerable foam scraps later:

Lookin’ good.

NOW she says she needs a gun to spray liquid latex rubber to give it the shiny finish.

Sigh.

Here’s hoping for a big tax return.