Making Armour

After drawing up some armour patterns in paper, I needed to figure out how to actually make them.

I don't work with metal, and am not the biggest fan of working with Apoxie, so thought I'd experiment with leather.  I remembered from my old doll-making days that silver spray paint didn't work very well on either vinyl or real leather, but couldn't remember which one. So I sprayed a couple of samples. It definitely worked better on the vinyl.  So I tried cutting and gluing some bits,  but it didn't have the right look I was after, plus the pieces just peeled right off,

Which meant going back to sculpting with Apoxie.  I needed the armour to look somewhat decorative so it would go with the highly detailed gloves and bracers from SartoriaJ. So I went looking through my stash of metal studs and filagree. I came across the leftovers from Dominic's chain, and there would be enough, so tried his chain on Matias to see how it might look...

Dominic's chain was fashioned from pieces of some Indian jewelry which I found at Value Village years ago. So I proceeded to separate the remaining medallions...

Before starting to sculpt all the armour, I cut all the pattern pieces out of card stock. The card stock would serve as a base for the Apoxie, keeping it smooth and sturdy while it cured, and then it would remain permanently on the underside of the armour.

Then I removed Matias' head and put it somewhere safe out of the way. I definitely didn't want to risk getting any Apoxie on his face. Then I put on his cloak, and wrapped his entire dressed body in plastic wrap..

On the first day I mixed up some Apoxie and made the two lower sections of the armour on his upper arms. I wanted the Apoxie to be as thin as possible, and tried running it through my pasta machine, but it was too sticky, so that didn't work. I ended up having to layer the Apoxie between plastic wrap and flatten it with a wooden roller. After cutting out and shaping the armour pieces, I used plastic wrap and tape to secure the sections onto the body to mold them to shape, and left them that way for 24 hours until they cured. Then yesterday I made the next section of his upper arm armour, and the front section around his neck. I hadn't mixed enough Apoxie to make the back section, so made one of the shoulder sections instead. All the new pieces were covered with plastic wrap and held in place with tape...

This morning I removed all the plastic wrap....

Once the last few pieces are sculpted, and cured, they will all get sanded so everything is smooth and flat. Then I will glue tiny bead 'rivets' into all the dents along the edges, and it will finally get sprayed silver, and 'aged' with brown paint.