First things first...

well, as I mentioned before, this year I am doing a cosplay in Mage armor from Dragon Age 2 as seen below. I started with the right shoulder pad thingy and then for some reason skipped to the boots :)

 first of all, I just went out and bought some of these foam sheets from Michael's Craft Store for 99 cents each. I suggest starting with the color thats closest to your final color cuz it makes the painting easier later on.
 then the first thing you need to do is pick a place to start. as I said, I started with the shoulder plate. next, look at all the flat surfaces individually and decide how many there are. for the shoulder alone, I counted 8 so I drew and cut out 2 differently shaped triangles to use as a stencil. then I traced and cut out 4 of each and taped them all together. now that I have a paper model that I know works, I traced the patterns onto the foam and cut it out.

One thing you DEFINITELY want to keep in mind is that this foam is easy to bend if you heat it. I personally just use my stove top to heat it for just a few seconds and then bend it the way I want. It cools off and hardens in like, less than a second or 2.

next, you got to put it all together! I used just a simple hot-glue gun. they are about 2 dollars at walmart and I suggest getting one.as you can see, I sort of got carried away and didn't take many pictures here. I sort of jumped straight to the painting. 


the picture below is the little neck piece that the armor has on it. as you can see, I changed it a little just cuz I didn't like how big the regular one was. I used the same method I described above. just get a piece of foam thats the right size, hold it over heat, bend it, and repeat until you have it the shape that you want it. and then paint it to look all dirty and stuff :)

below is a picture of the little spiky thing that sticks out from the right elbow and doesn't really serve any purpose. but this thing, I made entirely from scraps I cut off from other pieces so SAVE YOUR SCRAPS!

 now, the boots were fun. obviously, it would have been hard to find knee-high brown leather boots for men, so I went to goodwill and bought 2 things: the first thing I bought were these brown dress shoes that were in my size for 2 dollars (and put some brown paint on them to make them look older and more dirty). then I cut out some armor for them, molded them how I wanted, painted them, and glued them on (I also added a few random bits to the back to make them less boring).

 the second were knee-high WOMENS boots that I just cut the shoe off of and kept the part that goes from my ankle to my knee. the plan is to hot-glue these two together to make armored boots.


the boots were my favorite part. I just cut out a few armor pieces (paper pattern first, then foam, then heat, then mold), and painted 2 coats of silver as a base. I added them to the boots using brass-colored craft brads that I got from my local craft store. same with the little spikes on the back of the boots and everything (the spikes, I made 4 total: 2 for each foot, so that I could glue them together to make it thicker and more durable).

well thats all I have so far, I'll update again soon with more progress!