"I can bring you in naughty, or I can bring you in nice."
I made this because it was very funny to me. I posted some photos thinking maybe some of my friends would be amused by it, too. I was astounded when it went semi-viral on Facebook and Reddit, and was featured on NerdBot.com. Other people are amused by my shenanigans, too? Cool! Guess I'll do what any true Millennial would do and blog about it...
This Halloween, I learned how to make armor out of EVA foam to make a costume of The Armorer from The Mandalorian. At one stage of the process, my husband remarked that it reminded him of a gingerbread house. And, well, once that image was in my head, I couldn't not do it! I vowed that my next project would be a gingerbread-themed Mandalorian helmet.
I spent several weeks building this, making candy pieces, and doing fine details, all the while giggling to myself, saying things like, "Why am I doing this?" and "To what end?" And to be honest, it was just because I was really amusing myself, and for the thrill of a good art project. The fact that it gained me widespread nerderiety was just the foam icing.
Read on to see how I did it!
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These are the materials I used:
Constructing the Helmet
I started by making the helmet out of EVA foam. I had learned how to do this for my Armorer Halloween costume (I went into more detail about this process in that post). I learned by watching a lot of YouTube videos, mostly by Kamui Cosplay. She has a great one on Getting started with EVA foam armor, one on the 10 most useful tools for cosplay, and lots more.
For both my Armorer costume and for this, I used a template I got from PapercraftUniverse3D on Etsy.
Making the candy
Okay so apparently, foam clay is super fun to play with! Kamui Cosplay has a great tutorial on sculpting with foam clay. I used this to make all of the candy pieces, as well as the columns that the gumdrop horns sit on. This is also what I used for the "icing."
After molding all of the pieces and letting them cure for a couple of days, I painted them with acrylic paint, and topped them off with a coat of Mod Podge to give them a glossy finish.
For the gumdrops, after I painted them, I coated them with a thick coat of Mod Podge and then rolled them in these teeny tiny beads that look like sugar, which I got from SugarSunrise on Etsy. They came out better than I dared to imagine! I think the gumdrops are what really sell it.
Assembling the Helmet
Once I had all of the candy made, I started applying it to the helmet, using the foam clay as icing. I applied all of the candy before I painted the foam the gingerbread color, which may seem counterintuitive, but I promise there's a reason. The foam clay adheres directly to the foam using only water, so if you put any paint or sealer on the foam first, the foam clay won't stick. It makes the painting more tedious later, but I stand by my choices.
I applied lines of foam clay and pressed the candy pieces into them. In some places, I sculpted foam clay to look like icing dripping down the side of the helmet.
Then I outlined the edges around where the face shield would go with a thin layer of foam clay. This should be done before inserting the face shield, so that you don't get foam clay on the face shield while you're applying it.
Adding the Visor/Face Shield
This is the trickiest part. I learned how to do it from watching this tutorial from Zero-Cool Prop Shop on YouTube.
I cut the visor from a welding face shield, and shaped it using a heat gun. If you arrange it right, you can sometimes get two of these out of one piece, which is nice if you're making multiple helmets, or if you totally mess up the first visor like I did.
I traced the opening on paper, cut the face shield to the shape, and used a heat gun to give it a curved shape, then glued it into the helmet using contact cement.
Painting & Finishing
The final step was to paint on the gingerbread color. I mixed the color using acrylic paints and carefully painted it on around all of the icing & candy pieces. I had to apply a lot of layers, because I didn't put any type of sealer on it, so the paint soaked into the foam quite a bit. I couldn't spray on a sealer like Plast-Dip like I did for my first project, because I needed to preserve the icing & candy, and I was afraid if I used a brush-on sealer like Mod Podge that it would show brush strokes. I tried a few things on some foam scraps, and nothing looked as good as painting it straight on the foam, so that's what I did. I also didn't apply any sealer on top of the paint, which I may still do in order to preserve it longer, I just need to do some more sample tests to make sure I don't ruin it in the process.
If needed, you can also glue some upholstery foam on the inside to make it fit more snugly.
And that's it! Throw in an excellent Christmas sweater from my brother and a stuffed Baby Yoda from my husband (because my family just gets me), and you're poised for festive nerd glory.
'Tis the way.
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