WOW YOU WANNA MAKE THIS?!
o hellz yeah LETS DO IT.
What you'll need:
1) 10mm, 2mm, and 1mm eva foam.I personally LOVE the stuff from TNT Cosplay Supply
2) A dremel with a low(ish) grit sanding head as well as a stone head (most dremel kits come with both of these bits, just check to see if yours has one before buying some new ones from the store!)
3) a utility knife (or exacto-blade. Just make sure it can cut all the way through your foam)
4)1/4" PVC pipe. You can find this at any hardware store
5) a hacksaw (or any type of cutting tool that will cut PVC)
6) a heat gun
9) Kwik Seal
10) plastidip (or sealer of your choice)
11) paint and clear coat of your choice!
LETS BEGIN
Start off by either drawing a blueprint for the bow by hand, in the illustrative software of your choice, OR just use mine!
I only drew out half of it since I'll just be mirroring the image for the other side. Also my lines are shit because I made this blueprint with the intention of fixing the crooked lines as I was cutting this out of foam
to learn how to print standard images to the size you need, click -here-
Take your blueprint, PVC, and heatgun outside and carefully shape your PVC so that it goes through the body of the bow like so. This is to add stability so that it don't flop around all nimbly pimbly like
AND MAKE SURE YOU ARE OUTSIDE!!! WITH GOOD VENTILATION!!!! The fumes from PVC will wreck your lungs!
ANYWAY. I recommend starting at one side and then moving to the other. Once you have your PVC shaped, cut away any excess! I ended up using all 5ft of my PVC, but if you're shorter than me you may use less. Now go back inside because it's cold and dark and scary in the outside world!!!
Take your scissors and cut out your blueprint, following the outer-most lines. Now take your pattern and trace it onto your 10MM EVA foam SIX TIMES!!! Three for each half. This thing takes up a lot of EVA foam
(note: you can also use insulation foam board. The process will pretty much be the same, but the PVC will not extend all the way through the body, only about 2" in from the handle would be necessary), you would only need to cut the pattern out twice, and you can NOT use contact cement. It will eat through the foam)
Now we're going to make a channel for our PVC to run through. Lay two of your six pieces out, just the way they will be attached to the PVC. These will be the middle pieces, sandwiched on either side by an outside piece. Lay your shaped PVC on top of these pieces and trace along either side of it, do your best to keep the PVC in the same place as you do this! You don't want to make your channel too big or too small! Once you've traced the shape of your PVC on to both halves, take your utility knife and -carefully- cut along the lines you traced. Once you have created this channel for your PVC, take some contact cement (or hot glue) and glue your PVC in place! Do your best to line everything up so that your bow doesn't go askew.
You should now have some real thin kinda dumb looking halves to your bow. Great job! Now it's time to bulk it out. Take the other pieces you cut out and, using your spray adhesive, glue them to the PVC-filled core. I recommend working on one part at a time and do this OUTSIDE. The spray adhesive gets everywhere and on everything. It's obnoxious, but very handy.
Once the pieces are all glued on top of each other, you should have something that looks a little something like this:
please ignore my ramblings, the Katsucrunch was REAL.
Now stand back and look at what you've made so far! it's all starting to come together!!!
The next step is to slowly start shaping the edges with your dremel. I recommend using the rough sanding bit to get the bulk of the shape in. Once you're happy with the curves and bevels, I recommend taking that stone bit and carefully smoothing it all out. It isn't a necessary step, but it just helps finalize it.
Once you're done beveling, your bow should look a lil something like this:
Now here's the tricky part.... take your blueprint and cut out the smaller details! Not all at once, but just the ones you're ready to start working on. For me, the next step was the crescent moon-shaped part, the heart, and the pointy piece that comes up into a swoop (highlighted in green). Cut four of those, one for each side of each half of the bow.
NOTE: the lines running through the center of these pieces are there to let me know that they will need to be beveled
I carefully traced and then cut the pointy swoop and crescent pieces from 4mm foam and used my stone bit to bring them to shape. You can use the sanding head if you want, I just feel it takes off too much at once which makes it harder to control the shape!
Once you have those pieces brought to shape, use your contact cement and carefully glue them on. When I glued the crescent piece on, I had to use my dremel to make the transition from the original layer to the crescent's layer smoother.
From here on, it gets REALLY simple! Those steps you just took? yeah, do the same for the rest of the details! I used 1mm EVA foam for everything else and contact cement to glue them on!
Once I got here, all that was left was to fill in some cracks and smooth out my bevels. To do that, I used kwik seal and my fingers! This probably took the longest to do, but I really feel like taking the time to smooth out all my edges and fill in any spots I may have over-dremeled was really important.
From here, we start painting. Begin by giving your bow three nice, generous layers of Plastidip on each side. I think I went through an entire can of this stuff on the bow alone. It suuuucked.
Once you're done plastidiping, just start going at it! I painted the gold on by hand with a metallic gold paint, but you can totally use a gold spray paint if you want! Live ya life! Same goes for the pink and red details.
When I was all done painting my bow, I felt a nice glossy finish would really add some pizzaz to the piece! I used Krylon UV-Resistant Clear Acrylic Coating, which came out really nice. It has some flex to it as well as a nice shine, not overwhelming or anything!
ft. Necromimi Cosplay, taken by @Photo_j_g
This bow was a lot of fun to make and was fairly quick too! From start to finish, it only took me about a week and a half (and most of that time I was at work, unable to work on my bow!). I never really saw myself making or wearing a cosplay like this, but the second I put it on my body I just felt so... elegant. So beautiful.
I will have an entire Youtube video up to talk about the construction of the jacket/cape/corset/skirt/socks, so definitely check that out if you want to see how I made those pieces as well!
And if you end up using my blueprint or this tutorial to help you make your Heartseeker Ashe bow (or really any bow!), please send me a photo! I'd absolutely LOVE to see it!
Ta-ta for now!
-Moth Child