#56

Hi there!

It's been a while since I wrote anything. The last few weeks at my practical training/work placement ended up being rather hectic. I also learned a lot, so that's cool!

A gender-neutral marriage law has been passed in Finland, on a Friday about 2 weeks ago. So far it's gotten through 2 major votes, so basically it will probably be written into law. The parliament approved it in general and the grand legislation committee approved it with a majority vote as well. At this point they've started writing up the legislation that will be affected by the changes in this upcoming marriage law, and they'll re-approve it in the parliament a couple years from now. Honestly what I find really interesting about this whole process is that this is basically the first piece of legislation that started as a petition that was approved by the parliament! It would be great if this precedent inspires people to be more active with politics and such.
/ EDIT: I just heard. Some dumbass from "the Finns Party" is making the whole parliament vote on this again. What in the world. I'm pretty sure the majority hasn't changed in this two-week period, this is just super frustrating.

I'm currently just hanging around on campus and was just roped to do a spoken English test again, because someone from the group didn't have a partner. Fuck this, as if I didn't have other things to do. Oh well. What're you going to do.

Our cruise's theme this year is movies - guess who's going as Star Lord?! Such a surprise, wow. Anyway, I'm trying to use that costume as much as possible before I put in dreads and will be unable to wear a wig and so on. I've ordered Ravager patches for the coat and decals for the walkman and everything. All I need to do is some paint modding on the walkman, an empty C-cassette and the NERF quad blasters I ordered from Amazon. It should be okay, I guess. I'm super pumped anyway, ha. The general imitation prop I had seen on Entertainment Earth when I was originally making the cosplay had been discontinued/sold out, so I went with the NERF versions. At least I'll have modded Star Lord NERF guns at the end...?

.:+*+:.

Fanciness galore! I had to leave for a bit to do the spoken English test there, but I'm currently sitting in a thesis seminar. We're now getting our thesis schedule together a bit, we're starting it properly in the spring. Or so it seems, at least.

I have an appointment with an optician this Saturday. I don't really think my lenses are too weak but they're getting so scratched up that I'm seeing less with glasses on than without them. I'll probably also look into some different types of frames, but I'm not sure. I kind of really like the ones I've had for going on 5 years now. It's a habitual thing, I suppose. Kind of like how it takes a while to get used to your own image in the mirror after getting a haircut? Except with glasses your "view" is also different since you can see the frames at all times.

Anyway, I don't have anything important to talk about, really. This was a rather rambling post as is. (The current presenter is speaking in a rather dull and monotonous voice so I figured I'd distract myself. End of this.)

Bye!

#55

Ay!

I'm not faring too horribly about, I don't know, carrying around clients' stories about their situations, but it's always kind of sad when you hear from a person how basically everything has gone wrong or things that they have no control over have dictated really damaging events. Ugh. At least in me, it doesn't really trigger pity or anything, I just feel really bad and/or angry on behalf of some of the clients here...

OH WELL. Can't change the world overnight. Even though I'm not usually present in the more heavy-duty client meetings (since extra people being present during crisis therapy situations don't really benefit anyone) there was one today that was kind of surprisingly deep. I'm just really glad that even though me, the crisis worker and the client didn't share a native language, everyone (especially in the client's case) was fluent enough in something to make legitimate discussion possible. As far as I know, it's exceedingly difficult to talk about feelings in a language that is not your native one. But especially in the kinds of circumstances some of the clientele have been exposed to, it's legitimately important to be able to discuss feelings and the mental struggle that's part of the healing process.

I feel a bit thrown off, to be honest. I don't usually even get the urge to smoke during the day since there's no occasion to go with anyone (I normally don't notice when the regular smokers go to have a cigarette break), but today I just needed a bit of peace. That's mostly the reason for me smoking in the first place - I don't get nicotine cravings but I think it's just good for my balance to take a few minutes' time out a couple of times a day. Even if I do it while watching videos or there's someone else present (e.g. on campus) it's still a separate thing from working or generally being in a situation where you're responsible for getting shit done. 

Oh well, it's only about an hour until I leave. I'm taking some of the extra hours I have to leave earlier today. CASUAL AND UNINTERESTING SHOPPINGU WITH J!! Yeah, my mother saw the tabletop pencil holders/boxes I bought from the bookstore yesterday, so I'm going to buy her some as well. Ha. There was something else I needed as well, but I seem to have forgotten what it is right now, so there's that.

I've also been spending way too much money on Amazon and elsewhere... I bought new fabrics for a redone Tauriel costume (or, rather, my first actual Tauriel costume) including real leather, which, although a fabulous colour and texture, was expensive as hell.

It looks awesome, though. Dayum.
Also ft. the fabric for Tauriel's dress.

And I've bought, ahem, a number of books. Like, I mean about a dozen.

The Bane Chronicles, The Shadowhunter's Codex and The Iron Trial by Cassandra Clare (The Iron Trial being co-authored by Holly Black)
Horns, 20th Century Ghosts, Heart-Shaped Box & NOS4A2/Nosferatu by Joe Hill
5th Wave and 5th Wave: The Infinite Sea by Rick Yancey
as well as Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

I also ordered a tarot deck, book and box set a while ago, because I saw a detective drama episode with psychics and got way too into it. Hah. Little known fact (maybe?): I've owned a "manga tarot" deck for about 10 years. It's pretty but also I would prefer a more classic art style of tarot cards to own at this point.

#54

Okay, so I'm thinking:

The next post is going to be about the latex stuff I made for Halloween, with pictures and everything. Let's see if I can manage to take out my laptop at home as well at some point this week, ha. (I usually just leave it in its protective sleeve inside my backpack because I can't be bothered to put it back in at night and then it ends up taking up some time in the morning... I'm sure you get where I'm going with this. Anyway.)

I've been watching In The Flesh again. Ugh! It's so good. But so irritating. Because even the "nemesis" type characters are very well written, in my opinion at least, so they're very realistic and understandable. It's frustrating how lifelike they are, really. Kieren and Simon though. Squee. (I think I've mentioned their general squee-ness in a blog post earlier, too? What even. I guess it wouldn't be too far-fetched.)

Marvel's epic news have been all over the place lately. I'm pretty sure the "leaked" trailer for Age of Ultron was pretty much planned, because it instantly made everyone really interested in what was up with Marvel Studios. And bam, less than a week later, they have huge announcements to make. Regardless of if it was planned or not, it worked out great, as usual. I'm especially looking forward to the filmatisation of Captain Marvel, when it eventually comes out.

(Also let's just ignore the end-of-the-world references in all these upcoming movies forever, okay?! X-men: Apoca-NOPE!, Thor - Ragnar-NOPE!, Avengers - Infinity Wa-NOPE! Yes, good.)

I have about an hour until some students are going to arrive for a tour of the premises. We're showing them around with the other trainee, apparently. I also spent the morning organising some things for my thesis, which is generally a mess. Well. I hope I can sort it out at some point.

Bye!

#53

Whoa!

I went to see The Maze Runner on the Finnish premiere night, last Friday. I was expecting good things because some fan accounts I've followed on Twitter/tumblr. and elsewhere were happy with the movie, and it got semi-good critic ratings online as well. I went with 8 friends to a showing that started at 11PM.

It was  s o  g o o d. I just... what. I'm super glad about the postponed release date (from February to September 2014) if it led them to be able to make it this good. My neck and leg muscles were actually sore the next day, because I was tensing my muscles like 90% of the runtime. And I already knew what was going to happen. Some of my friends were super into it too - the movie was just really intense all the way through. I don't know, probably some fans who are more "purists" at nature when it comes to film adaptations probably were a bit disturbed by the differences between the movie and the book, but I think it was a working, whole storyline. Sure, I missed the amoeba-like Grievers I'd imagined in the books, the "floating Maze" illusion, the surveillance critters (and the goddamn telepathic connection between Thomas and Teresa, what happened to that?) but I was still really impressed with the movie. I left the theatre feeling really mindblown, and I really want to go see it again! We also received some discount coupons for movie tickets, I'm internally debating whether to use them for Dracula Untold or another run of TMR.

Here are some pictures of the Gladers because why not.

Also, just saying, I thought the casting all around was really good. I was expecting the main cast to be good, but they actually did deliver really well. Especially Blake Cooper (Chuck) and Ki-Hong Lee (Minho) were super accurate to my character headcanons. I obviously enjoyed the other main Gladers' characterisations as well (Aml Ameen as Alby, Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Newt, Will Poulter as Gally, Kaya Scodelario's Teresa etc.). I just still can't get over the fact that Thomas was supposed to be "ugly as a piece of fried liver on a stick" and he's played by Dylan. AHAHA. I mean, don't get me wrong, Dylan is great, so was his performance, and obviously Hollywood isn't going to put an "ugly" person in the lead of this kind of hero-lead YA franchise. But still. Still.

I literally have nothing else to talk about, to be honest. This week we have the elections for our church council representatives, and I'm gonna vote for someone I know (surprise). I'm not that knowledgeable about how much sway the council members actually have over real issues, but at least I'll know that if they get to vote on some issue that I care about, I've tried to put someone in there whose stance on major issues I can be semi-sure of. 

What else is going on this week? The first half of my work placement will be past by the end of the week (5 weeks down, 5 to go!) and I'm feverishly trying to get my latex horns ready by the time Halloween comes around on Friday. We still don't know what we're going to do, though. Oh well. 

Tip for people who are planning on making latex prosthetic pieces: don't just mold it how you like according to your face and imagination. Make sure that shit can stand up by itself, because having to paint latex alternatively between two sides of the clay support fucking sucks.

This has been a PSA. 

Bye! 

#52

Hey!

I'm writing from work placement again, surprise surprise. It's just that since I'm on my laptop 8 hours a day most of the time and I also have to carry it back and forth whenever I come to work, I don't really feel like setting it up at home in between...

The Maze Runner finally premieres in Finland this Friday. I'm so pumped, you would not believe. I mean, even Rotten Tomatoes gave it 60%+ rating consensus, which is pretty good for what is essentially "another YA dystopia trilogy". I mean, the critics decide if it's rotten or a tomato and they tend not to be the biggest fans of the more teenager-y franchises. (I don't know what the terms for "mostly good"/"pretty much horrible" categories are on RT but whatever.) From the limited amount of tweets and things I've not managed to avoid about TMR, I have the impression that fans liked it but some people thought the directors etc took a little too many artistic liberties? Pretty par of the course for a book-to-film adaptation, to be honest. So the movie might be great or might be horrible. I really want to give the novels another read, but right now I have a ridiculous pile of fantasy books from the library, so I kind of need to read through those first... damn.

I updated to iOS 8.1 and I got the Camera Roll back! Hashtag happy camper. Also what on earth is up with the "recently deleted" folder? When deleting pictures is such a pain to do manually on the iPhone, did it really make sense to Apple to literally keep any deleted image or video for 30 days before it's automatically removed from the phone's memory? I actually had 2Gb's worth of deleted videos and pictures in there, because I hadn't realised that everything actually stays in that folder. Sigh. Oh well, at least there's a "delete all" option for that folder, so you don't really have to do the same process twice. So there's that. My kaomoji shortcuts still refuse to function in most of my social media apps, though. DEVELOPERS PLEASE FIX THIS I NEED STUPID KAOMOJIS LIKE I NEED OXYGEN.

Okay, I know I try to stick to proper grammar on this blog but I feel like the struggle merited a Caps'd sentence, so bear with me on this exceptional day.

I still have no idea what I should do about my thesis. Oops. I'm hoping I can get some tips from teachers the next time I'm going to be on campus... Last year, they had a table available for download with various research subjects that different parties had asked for the school to commission for them. It had all the information - what kind of resources and/or possible pay or funding would be available, when they wanted it done, what they wanted the researching student to be specialising in - and you could contact the people commissioning the research directly. But the only interesting subject on that iteration of the subject table was due the end of this year, which is obviously much too soon considering my thesis schedule. Also I'm pretty sure most of the represented subjects had already found students to do or compile research for them.

I'm looking forward to Halloween a lot this year as well! We sort of have costumes that go together with J & J. I need to start working with the latex to make my horn prosthetics, though! I'm probably going to do a mini-tutorial of a blog post about that here, too, at some point. Probably won't be early enough for anyone to use it this Halloween, but learning about building latex pieces might be useful for someone? Who knows.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I'll go back to pretending I'm working now, ha ha.

Bye!

#51

I'm so weirded out that there are at least some views on my posts right now, what even.
Thanks for being interested, I guess? I'd thought this blog was public since almost a year ago, but apparently it wasn't - so the Star Lord Post of Doom also changed that, in a way.

I'm still at my work placement/trainee office, but now I've actually got some projects underway.
I've worked with some clients and we're fleshing out a plan for how to reach the clients that need the work the Multicultural Women's Association is doing. We're going to be visiting Finnish language courses and maternity clinics around the Helsinki Metropolitan area, and introducing the kinds of help and support you can get through the organisation. The clients still show up kind of unpredictably, because the Resource Centre / offices moved to a different part of what is essentially the central area about a month ago.

I bought Shadow of Mordor but I couldn't play it - fail! I didn't even realise it had a mandatory requirement of a 64bit Win OS. Oh well, my dad's upgrading his home office computer soon, and the old one has a 64bit Windows as well as a better graphic card than my gaming PC, so I guess SoM is going to be on my roster within the next month or so. We might end up having both of the computers running simultaneously, so that we don't have to do as much file transferring, though. Ha.

Before I knew there was this kind of easier solution to the gaming PC crisis, I researched a bit about gaming PC builds. I found one that seemed interesting - I think that when I get my own apartment fo' reals, I'm going to build one from scratch. I don't know yet, probably I'll have to prioritise my spending at that point even though I have some money saved up.

Also it might be super handy that J's ex-boyfriend is an electronics technician and he figured out her gaming PC build which is badass so... maybe I can recruit him to help me with my build, too. 

I really have no need to buy the latest, most expensive technology - in most cases, the benefits of the latest model in comparison to the second- or third-latest versions of graphics cards and other components is pretty minimal when you take into account the amount of extra money you have to pay for them. Electronics "age" quickly so even a minor decrease in efficiency and a period of, say, a year after release, will significantly decrease the components' price.

Okay, /lecture. Anyway, I'm going back to trying to figure out what I could do today before a functional/practical group session this afternoon.

Bye!

#50

Wow, making post 50 seems so anticlimatic after the epic madness of that last cosplay post, to be honest.

Also I'm actually at my work placement right now, but I don't have anything else to do at the moment so that's that. 

This field of work is super interesting to me - the clients are mainly women with immigrant backgrounds who have been or are victims of violence. I just feel pretty inadequate on most days. Oh well, I've barely been here a week and I'm a trainee so I'm sure I can live with myself even after this. Being that I'm studying to become a social worker, essentially, I can still help the English and/or Finnish-speaking clients to communicate with the social welfare office, fill out forms and stuff. That's basically what I'm educated for, anyway. Also, as a trainee I probably couldn't join the actual workers here for the more crisis-heavy client meetings anyway, since a trainee's position shouldn't include those kinds of responsibilities. I'm learning a lot too, even though not all of it is related to violence, exactly. Ha.

Usually our work placement consists of 7 hour days at the work placement location and 1 hour of independent work a day. Since this Resource center is open 8 hours a day, I'm usually here for the whole time. Because my work placement is going to last 10 weeks, I'll gain enough extra hours that I can take some whole days off to do school assignments and such things.

I also need to figure out my thesis subject, whoa. I need to start asking around everywhere, basically. I'm supposed to present a plan for how I'm going to execute the thesis work this fall, and so far I have no idea. Again, since I'm not particularly interested in any subject or have any really good expertise for a certain portion of the social work field, it's kind of tough to get the process going. I suppose I'll have to start consulting with teachers, eh.

What else... oh, my Only Lovers Left Alive DVD arrived! Haven't had time to rewatch it on that, yet. According to the DVD cover it got really good ratings! I'm not surprised, really. I really enjoyed it even though I was rather sceptical when I originally went to see it. With this newcomer, I now have 7 full movies for our upcoming Hiddles marathon - and that's without counting his Marvel Cinematic Universe films (which, duh, I also own).

Also, something that arriving packages reminds me of - these arrived for the Star Lord cosplay! The walkman isn't fully functional (neither of its headphone jacks actually enables you to hear music) but it'll do just fine for a Star Lord prop!

Sony WM-F1, circa 1979 and some random
orange headphones.

The Walkman I bought is actually a bit different from the Sony Walkman TPS-L2 model that Star Lord has, but seriously? Marvel/Disney/Sony (I don't really know who's making them) is selling custom TPS-L2 Walkmen for completely ridiculous prices so I ordered a similar model and will be looking into painting it light blue and doing the decals on top. I found this one person who makes vinyl stickers for this exact purpose, so maybe I'll order those from them. 

Anyway, I think that's all for now! I might update here about how the work placement and thesis business progresses. Hm.

Bye!

#49 - Star Lord

Hey! 

So if you got here through my tumblr post, you probably want to know about the Star Lord helmet I made. Just so you know, this is not a cosplay blog (since Tracon IX was pretty much the first time I ever cosplayed fo' reals) and thus you probably won't be interested in most of my other posts, not gonna lie. I usually just vent about regular days and stuff. I haven't posted in a while because I've been building up for this monster of a post, to be honest.

I wanted to make a note to myself as much as any other interested parties about how I went about the creation process for my Star Lord props. I know that even though this post is very long, I still didn't go into detail about everything so feel free to ask me anything on my tumblr.

Links for some things I bought/am going to buy to eventually complete my Star Lord cosplay will be at the bottom of the post.

Also some of my reference pictures have no sources, I'm sorry - reverse image searches only made me come up with tumblr posts. Eh.

I have a short version of this "guide" at the top here, as well as a more in-depth guide after it, with pictures and stuff.

1. Downloaded Helagak's pepakura design
2. Printed & cut out the pepakura design.
3. Transferred pieces onto Plastazote (aka foam sheets / 'softis' / vaahto/solumuovi. I ordered mine here but I guess you could find it at Etola etc in Finland. PLEASE NOTE: DIFFERENT FOAMS AND GLUES, PAINTS AND HARDENERS WORK DIFFERENTLY. DO YOUR RESEARCH  - OTHERWISE YOU WILL MELT YOUR FOAM BUILDS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)
4. Hot glued pieces together, used the hot tip of the glue gun to bend appropriate seams.
5. Sealed any bubbles or imperfections in finished product with PVAc glue (Erikeeper), first 3 layers of 1:1 glue/water mixture and then with pure glue. Drying time ~5h between layers.
6. Hardened the model with 2 coats of Polyester resin. (Bought at Biltema. The stuff you use to attach fiberglass sheets to boats and such.) Drying time 7-8+ hours between coats.
7. Sanded down, covered with body filler. (kitti in Finnish. I bought a really light one called OneFill at K-Rauta.) Drying time 6+ hours between layers.
8. Sanded down, second filler layer.
9. (Because of the deadline) Painted finished product with Maston 100 series spray paints, with a primer and finishing clear coat spray. (These paints can be found at some K-Rauta outlets, as well as Prisma, Tarjoustalo.... etc.) I used painter's tape to cover up details while spraying so I got clear colours.

And the long, VERY LONG version:

So about a month before Tracon, I came across some pictures of Star Lord from the comics - I had had a vague notion of his character before the summer (from reading old comics as a child etc) but the Guardians of the Galaxy film was obviously a major catalyst in making me want to do a Star Lord cosplay. Also, I've had a knee-length red faux leather jacket for years, so I figured I already kind of had a head start.

So what I did was literally googling "how to make a star lord helmet". In the end, I surfaced in a thread on The RPF - an online community for cosplayers and other prop-building hoomans, from America mostly. It was there that I found Pepakura files for the Star Lord helmet & armor props I ended up building. 

RPF Thread: Star Lord helmet AND accessories!!! by Helagak

You can find some information about Pepakura on that thread and elsewhere on the internet/the RPF but basically the idea is this: someone has made a 3D-model of a prop in a specific program. The program then divides said 3D model into pieces that could essentially be printed and used to build the thing. Creator then discards useless pieces (there are many, since it's computer-generated and some minuscule seam-filling parts would be impossible to cut out and work into the prop etc. )

- decide whether you want to build pepakura from foam sheets or thick-ish cardboard

- find a design for desired prop made for your desired material (foam/paper Pepakuras are different, but foam is said to be easier for beginners)

- if you don't already have it, download Pepakura Viewer (PC only!)

- open the pepakura design file on the program. 

- print your file and cut out the pieces. Make sure to set your printing paper size to Letter because that's the default sizing that Pepakura viewer and American printers use. Also ensure you don't need to rescale the pep file for your head/body size.

This helmet Pepakura was created, obviously, according to Helagak's head size: 22,5 inches (around the largest part of your head, measuring around forehead & right at the back of your head.) which translates to about a 57 cm circumference. Mine is 56cm, (22 inches) so I didn't have to rescale the design - please note that it ended up being a tight fit anyway, since I didn't have a mannequin head to set the prop on for hardening in a more legitimate shape. Make sure to make a slightly bigger prop than you'd need - you can always pad the inside with foam in the end, if it's a little too big.

So since I made mine of foam, I didn't need to print directly on cardboard. This is the chart I used to figure out all my helmet pieces, of which there were many.

I wanted to make sure to get all the pieces, so I duplicated pages 2-5 

so I got separate pieces for the left & right sides. 

The helmet was 91 pieces total.

After I had cut out the pieces in paper (labeling as I went), I transferred them onto Plastazote foam sheets. I bought the sheets at Thames Valley Supply (two 2mx1m sheets of 6mm thick white Plastazote. You could also go thicker or thinner according to your preference. 6mm was pretty good - not too thin to make the larger planes of the prop wobbly, but not too thick as to make detailed work impossible. Please note that shipping costs to Finland for the two sheets ended up making the Plastazote cost over 100€ total!) to make sure I had foam that would not melt when I used my glues and hardeners, since I chose one person whose tutorials to follow for the building process. 

I ended up with 4 square metres of the stuff.
I could probably make an entire Iron Man armour
from the leftovers, honestly.

At this point I had already gone to a hardware store to pick up most of the supplies I would need. This trip cost about 100€, but I picked up stuff I could continue to use later for other projects. Also some of this stuff you might already own - here's a list and picture.

Erikeeper /PVA glue

OneFill & MultiFill body fillers

Polyester resin & hardener (from Biltema)

Hot glue gun + extra glue tubes

Strong rubber/nitrile gloves (polyester resin is somewhat toxic & staining)

Regular rubber/nitrile gloves (for painting)

Dust protection masks (polyester fumes are also harmful)

Protective eyegear (to protect eyes when sanding/painting)

Cheap brushes (polyester will ruin your brushes)

Everything except the polyresin is from K-Rauta.

In addition, I used my carpet knife/exacto knife, some markers, and strong cardboard pieces to protect my floor while cutting the plastazote. I will talk about the paints later. 

While I was cutting out the pieces, I was glueing them together as I got more pieces that were done. (I wanted to avoid having all 91 pieces just floating around waiting to get mixed up & misplaced.) I started with the armour, since it was simpler and consisted of fewer pieces. Also, I considered it less important to be built as meticulously as the helmet. Pictures from building the armour:

 Pepakura pieces

Topmost shoulder armour pad (topside)

Topmost shoulder armour pad (bottom)

Here you can see where I melted the Plastazote so I could fold it.

Finished armour foam build

When you print out Pepakura, the hill folds (bend so that the seam stays up, and the foam on both sides goes down) are marked by "- - - - - -" on the design and valley folds (bend so that the seam stays down, and the foam on both sides is bent up) are marked by "_._._._._.". In my build, hill folds are black and valley folds are red. Pepakura Viewer also enables you to see each piece individually in 3D so you can check how steep the folds have to be. It also shows which seams attach to other Pepakura pieces, and how the pieces are oriented in relation to one another. A.k.a. it's generally super helpful with the prop-building process. Helagak's design even has the colours available for your viewing, in case you want to use that as a colour reference.

At this point, I covered the armour pieces with a 1:1 PVA glue / water mixture. This is meant to smooth down any bubbles or imperfections the foam might have. If you use exercise mats or more "loose" foam, this will probably be more problematic for you - Plastazote is pretty nice in texture. Anyway, I covered the pieces with 3 coats of the diluted glue, and then 1 coat of just pure glue. I let the pieces dry until the glue had dried to complete transparency, so about 5-6 hours or so between each coat. After the helmet was done, I did the same 3 + 1 layer system on that. 

Before we go into the actual hardening process, I'll do a GIGANTIC SPAM of different phases of building the helmet out of foam. Here goes:

 Visor, 9 pieces

Visor, 15 pieces and back of helmet, 4 pieces.

Foam sheet after cutting out first ~30 pieces.

 All the side pieces with folds and sides marked, 

waiting to be ripped off the foam sheet.

 Sides of helmet, 10 pieces each.

Foam sheet ft. discarded paper pieces!

Sides + back, 24 pieces total. Visor with holes for eyes

and positions for "goggles" drawn in.

Helmet before breathing pipes, 70 pieces total.

Pipe pieces, 21.

Complete helmet foam build (front)

Complete helmet foam build (side)

So at this point all of the foam builds are done and have been covered in glue. Then starts the toxic/uncomfortable hardening part. Definitely use clothes you won't mind ruining when working with fiberglass resins. Also MAKE SURE YOU RESEARCH UNTIL YOU KNOW FOR SURE THAT THE RESIN YOU USE WON'T MELT THE FOAM YOU'RE USING. 

I covered both the helmet and the armour pieces in polyester resin. DO THIS OUTSIDE OR IN A WELL VENTILATED SPACE. THE FUMES ARE TOXIC, AND ANY DUST FROM SANDING IS TOXIC. IF YOU CAN, LET THE PIECES DRY E.G. IN A GARAGE SO THERE ARE NO TOXIC FUMES IN YOUR LIVING SPACE. ALSO MAKE SURE TO WEAR A RESPIRATION MASK AND GLOVES WHILE YOU WORK, BECAUSE IN ADDITION TO BEING SLIGHTLY POISONOUS, THIS SUBSTANCE WILL ALSO HARDEN ONTO YOUR SKIN AND/OR CLOTHES.

Also, use disposable brushes and mixing cups. The polyester resin I was using worked on the basis of using a little bit of polyester with a little bit of hardener and painting one coat onto the foam pieces. I'd advise for you to not mix more than 0,5 dl (~1,7 fl oz) at once, because at least for me that was enough to cover either the helmet or both of the armour pieces in one sitting. You don't want to make too much of this stuff, it'll just harden into your mixing cup and become toxic waste, basically. 

I did 2 coats of polyester resin, letting it dry for at least 7-8 hours between each coat. I was cutting it close because I had such little time, but you could let them dry for 12+ or even a full 24 hours between coats, to make sure your prop won't break because it hasn't dried properly. 

I don't have any pictures from this stage, but you really can't tell much of a difference about the foam build from pictures anyway, since both the glue and the resin dry almost transparent. 

After the foam builds were pretty much hard (a third polyester coat would have basically made them completely non-flexible, which I kind of didn't want, anyway) I sanded down any drip marks and over any surfaces I could reach. After that, I covered the builds with body filler aka OneFill. Most body fillers have a maximum fill layer limit of 2 mm (.07 in) but this one had a 5 cm (2 in) limit and was supposed to be super light so.. way to go? It had the consistency of very firm whipped cream, and was very difficult to spread, since it would get stuck on your skin, rubber gloves, or any wooden/metallic smoothing instruments I tried to use. Sigh.

 Armour pieces: (left & center) elbow piece, 2 coats of filler + sanding

(right) shoulder piece, 2 coats of filler

I tried to use the MultiFill body filler to cover up the imperfections left from the first layer of filler, but it was much more rough and difficult to sand down than the OneFill. (Darker grey in left & centermost pictures.) Probably excellent for filling in holes in your walls - not so much for props. For the rest of the pieces, I used OneFill for the second layer as well. 

One layer of OneFill on the helmet

 One layer of OneFill + sanding

I didn't cover the pipes or the pipe "grooves" on the cheeks with filler at all, because I figured they wouldn't need it and it would only make it more difficult to work with them later. I also decided not to put filler on the inside of the helmet, because it had hardened kind of lopsided and barely fit me at this point. I also think it would just mostly be a ton of extra work, since you'd have to sand down the inside as well as the outside for comfortable wear. In the armour pieces, for example, I barely sanded the undersides since they only had to be smoothed out enough as to not be snatched onto clothing etc. and snap off. 

I added a second layer of OneFill to the helmet, and sanded it down. At this point, it already looks pretty rad, if you ask me. This is mostly the final form except for painting and adding straws for the "piping" of the helmet.

 Can you tell I feel super badass there on my backyard?

I bought my paints from Prisma. Regular, acetone-based spray paint from Maston.They cost under 5€ per can, and I bought 9: Red primer, grey primer, clear top coat, grey, silver, gold, copper, black, and brown. Please note that if you haven't covered your foam build with anything (even just the PVA glue), acetone and acetone-based solutions can melt your foam build like acid. 0/10 do not recommend. 

Pictures and paint testing:

I snuck out of the store all like I SWEAR I DON'T DO GRAFFITI!

These are the colour reference pictures I used for my armour pieces and the helmet:

And the actual painting process:

This looked super ugly so I painted a lot of brown and copper on top of it.

Finished painting armour pieces, sorry for the bad lighting.

Next: primer coat on helmet and testing if it fit on my head with the wig I had bought from Arda Wigs. I bought mine in a darker brown - I think the colour is out of stock now. But they have many blonde and lighter brown shades that could work well for this cosplay if cut to proper shape.

I painted the rest of it in such a way that I did some black "shading" first, covered some areas (jaw, insides of goggles, general lower parts of helmet) in painter's tape to protect them from other colours, did the golden parts (visor, side & back details) let them dry, then painted everything in silver, protected areas of the pipes and the visor frame, and then sprayed a non-opaque layer of black to finish off the general gunmetal-like colour. When I was done, I removed all painting tapes and voila!

This stage looked super evil

Gold sprayed

Gold in the back and sides

Silver - gold details covered in painter's tape

Finishing coat of black, protecting the areas
that should stay silver around the visor & goggles,
jaw, nose area and the pipes.

Finished paintjob - you can see I accidentally did
the "pipe attachments" asymmetrically because
I only put tape on one of them, so I ended up spraying
the bright silver part with some black as well.
Oops.

All that remained was glueing on the "pipes" or straws. I just used big-ish black straws that I had scavenged from a bar, but you could use regular storebought ones. I sprayed some of them silver and used their pre-existing joints to my advantage. It turned out pretty good. Sadly I don't have any pictures of this stage seeing as I did it the night before I was leaving to the con, but you'll see them in the finished pictures of my cosplay at the end of the post! Also, when I left for the con, I noticed I'd forgotten to add straws to the cheeks so I brought black nail polish with me and crafted them from neon yellow and orange straws in our hotel room. 

Looking pretty good, in my opinion.
The helmet ended up looking a bit dented,
but I think that kind of works, too?
I mean, it is supposed to be a functional piece
of space armour...

That is it for the helmet "tutorial".

BUT

I also made a (mediocre at best, let's be real) Star Lord's Blaster gun from scratch and a toy gun. I had no pepakura for this but if you want to see, scroll on down. Pictures of the finished cosplay will be after that.

I bought a toy "police gun" at a toy store. Then I just estimated what kinds of pieces I would need and cut them out of the foam. I included a reference picture: the one Helagak showed in screencaps of their 3D printing files for the Blaster.

3D print file

Sketches and the "base" aka toy police gun

Finished Blaster build with glue layers and polyester resin layers:

Colour reference and finished paintjob:

There's still tape on the handle, which I later
sprayed a bit of gold on.

source: Entertainment Earth

ITEMS I WILL PURCHASE / USE LATER OR THAT I ALREADY OWNED FOR THE COSPLAY:

Owned:

• Long faux leather jacket, bought years ago from Backstreet
• Maroon leather army boots, bought at an independent shoe store years ago.
• Blue t-shirt (UFF), black skinny jeans and a brown leather belt
• Awesome Mix Vol. 1 iPhone 5S case from Etsy
• Used gas mask sling bag from the Russian army, bought at a flea market

Didn't use because of late arrival / will order later:

• Sling bag that I will modify : Link to eBay listing
• Blasters x 2 : Entertainment Earth
• Sony Walkman WM-F1 that I will modify (Star Lord actually has a Sony Walkman TPS L2 but those are ridiculously expensive due to special edition releases following the Guardians of the Galaxy movie release.)
• Orange headphones

Props that I will need to build/make:

• Modifications to boots
• Modifications for his belt buckle
• Actual shirt and pants made according to the movie's reference
• Boot jetpacks
• Lenses for the helmet
• Orb prop

Here are pictures of my finished cosplay! Credits for the pictures will be in the captions!

Credit: JeiDoll

Credit: amneziapanda

Credit: Helene Lindfors

THANK YOU FOR READING!