Worbla Armor - Embossed Technique

 Here's a sneak preview of the Diablo III Barbarian Tier 5 armor I am building. All of these pieces were made using a thermoplastic called Worbla.

One reason you might use Worbla instead of Wonderflex to create your cosplay armor is in the unique ways that you can manipulate Worbla.

Here's how I create a embossed look on Worbla armor. This technique is more cost-effective than layering extra Worbla on top. Instead, you are layering your less-expensive (and easier-to-cut) craft foam.

You need:

Sheets of craft foam (in two contrasting colors)

Worbla (available from cosplaysupplies.com or yayahan.com)

Heat Gun

A pointy wooden tool

Sharpie for drawing your design

Good scissors
Elmer’s glue
A surface to work on that the Worbla will not stick to (I use a piece of glass shelving from IKEA)

First, cut out your design in craft foam and glue it to your craft foam pattern piece. Then layer Worbla over the craft foam and use a pointed wooden tool to press the thermoplastic down around the edges of the design. Let’s see an example:

This is going to be a plate that wraps around the outside of my upper arm.

Here I layered my design in green foam over yellow. The yellow will become my pattern piece for an upper-arm plate.

First I heated a piece of Worbla, then stuck the pattern piece on it with the green design side against the shiny side of the Worbla sheet.

Then I flipped it over.

Here you can see that it helps to use contrasting craft foam colors because you can see the darker green design through the plastic.

Next, I used the pointy tool to press the heated Worbla down around the design shapes and get nice, smooth edges.

The Worbla cools and hardens pretty quickly so I heated and worked on one quadrant of the piece at a time.

After finishing the relief, I heated a second piece of Worbla and stuck it to the back of the craft foam. Then I pressed the edges together to seal in the craft foam (sandwich!) and trimmed the excess.

Save your Worbla scraps, you can heat them up and use them for decorations, like claws and scrollwork!

Lastly I heated up the whole piece and curve it into shape around my upper arm, then let it cool.

Here is the completed piece after adding the spike and painting it.

In this last image you can see the hand plate on which I used both the craft foam relief technique and also layered strips of Worbla for the edge details. Here it is easy to see the visual difference you get – with the relief technique you will have smooth, rounded edges, and with the layering technique you will have sharp edges., which looks great for border outlines.

Did you know? Worbla (or "Worbla's Finest Art") is made from renewable natural raw materials is also known as Rhenoflex RX 5050 which was originally engineered by a German company for the purpose of industrial shoe-making. You can buy it in the U.S. from cosplaysupplies.com or yayahan.com

Turn Shoes into Furry Winter Boots

Sure, be all '80s and call these leg warmers. Or call them "leg corsets" or "boot uppers". They transform any shoes into fur-trimmed boots!

They were fairly quick and easy to make, even though I hadn't worked with fur before. I made them for my Diablo 3 cosplay (currently in progress), but they are also very festive for the winter holidays! I may even wear them to a Seahawks game.

Here they are pictured with the clawed footwear (still in raw Worbla, not painted yet) that I am working on for the Barbarian costume.

I'll include some construction notes here in case anyone is interested in making something similar.

Disclaimer: I plan to reinforce these later, to make them less slouchy, perhaps using Buckram or boning.

Materials:

• 2 packs of 13 Large Grommets (I used 20 grommets total)
• White "Mongolian" faux fur, long-haired (fabric.com)
• Suede fabric
• Black Grossgrain ribbon (for lacing)

Construction Notes:

Start by creating a pattern of your leg. Cover your leg in plastic wrap, then masking tape, mark a line where the top and bottom edge should be, draw a line down the center front, then cut down the center front line and you've got your pattern. You can allow for the curve of the calf by snipping the pattern from the top down about 4 inches in two or three places to create darts.

Cut the suede using your pattern. I serged the front and top edges - a roll hem would also work - and just cut the bottom edge since this fabric doesn't fray easily.

When dealing with long fur, use a comb! Figure out which direction is "down" when you look at the fur and how it is laying. When you cut the fur you can try and slide your shears against the fabric to "part" the hairs, and that will give you less cropped short hairs at the bottom.

The fur strips are 4" wide on top and 3" wide on the bottom. Start with a wider option because you can always trim it later.


For the bottom fur, on my "boots" this is not attached, it is just like an anklet I slid on over my foot, and this works because there is a little bit of stretch to the fur fabric. I serged the top edge, left the bottom edge raw (it's hidden and fray-resistant) and sewed the two 3" end together to make a loop.

After sewing the fur onto the suede, I added grommets. After marking the placements with chalk, I use a hole punch to make holes down both sides before I go get my hammer out and start pounding away. A regular hole punch is the right size to get a hole started for Large grommets.