Erza Heavenly Wheel costume tips

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I know I said I'd do one of these since SOOO many people have asked me how I've done this or that and what material I used. So Figured I'd do a little journal entry about it. I'm not giving a full tutorial as I didn't take enough pics to be able to do one but I will tell you what I can and if anyone has any questions feel free to ask away as I know how daunting trying to tackle a huge armor project can be and not knowing were to start.

How long did this project take us you ask? It took us 1 month of working on and off and we would spend entire days to just working on the armor. However that was with 2 people. Also this is really not a 1 person can do kinda of costume a lot of my pieces were formed and molded as I was wearing them. The bra is one and the gloves are another part. To get the right curvature and look I had to be wearing them so they would look right when put on. If you have a dress form you can probably get away with doing the bra with out help but the gloves are another story.

All of the armor parts of this costume are craft foam we bought in rolls. If you go this route you will be using A LOT of rolls I believe we went threw 5 of them. I am not 100% happy with the craft foam it photo's well but doesn't wear well as in I need to do a lot of repairs after wearing this costume once if I ever want to wear it again. We wanted to go with wonderflex and I highly recommend this if you can afford it however we didn't have the money or time to work with it. However if you stay the craft foam route what we did to paint it is use a flat gray primer then a aluminum metallic spray on top of the gray primer to give it more of an armored look.

*Another tip buy LOTS and LOTS of Card stock that is what we used to pattern out all of the armor pieces so everything you see was first done in card stock then cut out in craft foam. If anyone wants I can also scan in anything you might want or need pattern wise as we've kept all the pieces so we can redo it in wonderflex someday.

Boots:
The base boot is a leather riding boot that  we then added craft foam on top of. We actually changed the whole bottom of the boot with how we designed and patterned it out so it gives it a totally different look. They are also of are own creation so they are not exactly like the anime version I wanted something different so we changed them up to something of are own creation. Personally I like them better then the anime design but this is all up to the person.

Cardstock patterning out phase
   

Craftfoam before being primered

After primer

All Finished


Gauntlets
These were made so that they can be easy taken off and put on. The inside are all Velcro and can come apart but the Velcro is on the inside so it is not visible

Finished the gloves are still not done yet
Top Bottom

Gloves:
Theses were an interesting challenge yet ended up being really easy when we figured them out. I personally LOVE these gloves the pointy finger look is just way awesome and I have almost full motion of my fingers in them thanks to how we put them together. Basically for this part you need someone else to help you and I don't highly recommend this but it's what we did. We actually glued the pieces on as I was wearing them if you go this route make sure your gloves are leather cause other wise you will burn yourself. Even with leather do no push down right away give it a sec or 2 before you press the piece into place.
*Make sure they are super tight to your skin as anything that doesn't fit skin tight will not look right if you can make sure they are a leather glove if possible as they fit like a second skin. However make sure you make it so you can get them on and off. I added velcro to the one side so  I could have more room for my glove to stretch so I could get them off.

Gloves:



Underside


Finished Glove and gauntlet



Armored bra: OH now this was fun, this is another project you will need a helper for unless you are lucky enough to have a dress forum. This was fairly easy in design the base is just a normal gray bra (which can I say how hard it is to find a gray padded bra). Also another warning with this please try not to burn yourselves. Everything is just patterning it out and seeing how it fits before cutting it out of foam and gluing it on.

Feel free to laugh at the next 2 photo's I know I did.
How we avoided the dreaded burn with a hot glue gun. Just card stock stuck in the bra to keep that hot glue away from my skin.


How you paint said bra since I had to wear it so we could get all the nooks and carnies you would miss if I wasn't wearing it. Just wear a nice stylish garbage bag so you don't get painted silver


Finished and painted
A little note the petals were added after we painted the silver and make sure to paint the petals even though they are white craft foam. Craft foam gets dirty very easy and it holds the dirt so best to spray paint the white anyway.

Shoulder armor
Oh these we had to redo twice, before we got the design we wanted. Are first attempt is terrible and will never see the light of day. Again its all about patterning these out that's the hardest part of this hole costume is just how much patterning you have to do. The rest is just cutting and gluing. These are attached to the bra via velcro on the underneath of them and a strip added to the bra.

Patterned out with card stock and testing with tape lol


Craft foam before paint
  Side

Finished


Belt/side pieces and long shields on belt:
I don't have progress pics of these but they are all one piece all are glued to the belt and the side pieces as well. The side pieces then get shoved underneath the bra when its being worn. We were gonna try spirit gum but with the heat there was no way it was going to work so we came up with this method at otakon the morning I needed to be in this outfit lol.

Skirt: The pattern I used is a poddle skirt pattern as it gives that pleated look when draped with out having to actually pleat anything. I added a long petite coat underneath to give it more of a poofy look

Swords: Honestly we had to finish these last min and for being last min they worked out. They are made from pink insulation foam that was cut with 2 different types of foam cutters and then lots and lots of sanding. After they were sanded they were covered in gesso. There are 3 layers of gesso on each side. Why gesso you ask? Well cause insulation foam melts if painted with spray paint so we needed to cover it in something. Also bondo and resin are a no no as well. I have not found anything yet that will seal the foam enough to let you do either of these on top of it.



Wings: OH gosh were to start with these. This was and still is the hardest part of this costume we had so many trial and errors with theses in fact I still don't like them but we ran out of time. The day we were leaving for otakon there was alot of cursing and swearing going on at theses wings as it just was not working. Are original idea was to have them be able to move so I could walk the hallways of otakon with out having to worry about people hitting me or me hitting people. That idea did not work and we had to rethink everything EARLY thurs morning were we just frankensteined them into place to keep them from going anywhere. Wanna know how we added screws to set them in the back lol yay for quick easy way of getting them to work. We originally wanted to do both sets of wings in foam core but that idea didn't work cause foam core doesn't come in big enough sheets so we had to use 2 different kinds of foam.

The top pair of wings:
They are made from Pink insulation foam were you guessed it was then covered in gesso. We also used a foam cutter to add an indent into them to give them more of a 3D effect were we then also painted black into the lines after it was spray painted to get them to pop even more. The Extra almost rose like looking pairs were put on to make it look layered they are craft foam we glued to the wings themselves. Also don't even mention the pink panther I hate it lol. I know its there and hate it. Lets just say they started make a different type of pink foam and it now has an indentation of a pink panther on it and well I tried covering it up and thought I had till we painted them with the silver and it popped out. I had no time to figure out how to hide it so it stayed there and apparently people thought I did it as a joke cause it was well liked at otakon to those who saw the back lol.

Bottom Pair: They are made from foam core. Foam core is nice as it didn't need to be gessoed just be careful of the edges as they will melt if you spray paint them to heavily. We also added black lines to make the wings pop more and of course a layered effect with the craft foam.

Harness: This was something we thought about and researched for a long time. As these wings are not normal angel wings and all the harness tutorials out there are for normal angel like wings with feathers we had to come up with are own design that would work for a top set and bottom set of wings. We came up an X harness. The top is cut shorter since those wings are bigger and the bottom parts stick out more for the smaller bottom wings. It is strapped to me with clear bra straps we screwed onto the frame. The frame is made out of wood that is screwed together then added epoxy glue to keep it from moving. What ever part of the harness was visible when we had the wings on we then added foam pieces to that to cover everything up and make it look nice. The foam pieces we just kept with the normal over look of the outfit and made shapes according to that as there was no real references to go off of at that point.


Back of wings


All finished



Again if you have any questions feel free to leave me a comment or email me at CrazyRevy@aol.com I have no issue with answering anything. Also if you want larger images of anything they are in my gallary here: s577.photobucket.com/albums/ss….
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scratzilla's avatar
thank you for sharing. :) . love it. The grey undercoat was a great help.  still working on what mediums i will use.  love your outcome.