An unusual doll... part 2

    Did you know that you can make doll armor out of craft foam? It's true, you can. I learned that fun fact when I was making a conquistador doll . The post says he was the first doll of 2019 but I think that has to be a typo, since it was my 2018 doll year in review. Fun to see one of the dolls in that post was also an unusual doll ordered by Jackie Rossi...

    So as I was saying, you can make doll armor out of craft foam. While I was making the conquistador I was having struggles getting his armored breastplate and helmet to not look horrible. I was aiming for at least more realistic. Through the magic of Google I found a tutorial on YouTube on how to make doll armor. If I ever find that tutorial again I will share it. But mostly right now I just remember (sort of) how to do it.
    The first step was trying to get the pieces cut in basically the correct shapes. I wanted to make the sword removable from the sheath but quickly figured out that was not going to happen if I wanted things to stay in scale. 

    The shield needed a border that was raised so the easiest way to do it was to cut out two shield shaped pieces, cut out the inside of one of them in the correct shape, and glue it to the other shield piece. Everything would be painted so cutting guides didn't matter at all. Oh, in case you didn't all know, Fabri-tac is basically my favorite glue and I use it for nearly everything. 

    The next step in making doll armor out of craft foam is fire. No, you don't actually set it on fire, even though this photo makes it look that way, but you heat up the foam in a candle flame and then you can shape it a bit and it hardens somewhat. If you attempt this, be careful, the foam can be incredibly hot and yes, you can (and likely will) burn yourself. I could say don't try this at home but no one listens to me. 

     After the heat treatment I had everything basically shaped the way it should be and from my reference pics I started putting on the designs. I was again super happy for all the straight lines! I learned from talking to Jackie about the doll that he is from The Legend of Zelda. I had no idea that Zelda had a horse! Game remakes can be fun. 

    After the shaping and sketching I started on the painting. I know I have said before and I will say it again now, there are A LOT of ugly stages in doll making. The armor goes through a lot of it. Sure, I could have started with a different color than pink, but it was what I had on hand. And it showed all of the sketch lines nicely so that helped.

     With an unusual doll build you might find that you run into some unusual problems you need to solve. One of the ones I ran into was the silver paint not coating. So I bought a different one. Then painted on a layer of white to at least cover the pink and did more layers of silver. Eventually it was looking better. The navy blue took a couple of coats, but that is to be expected with cheap craft paint. And actually I have even seen it with expensive paint. 

     Eventually I had a pretty nice looking shield that looked pretty much like the reference pics. Not bad for something made out of pink craft foam!