Day 6-8: Back pieces and more work on the breastplates

We made the back pieces so this was the first time we could actually try the armor on.  The male armor (which has been MUCH easier to make) looks great!  The female armor however.....  So you can't really tell from this picture, but the waist fits, but the breasts and neck are floating like 5 inches away from my body...

We tried to make it smaller, to cut it at an angle, to just try to bend it with the heat gun back towrads me.  And all of those things distorted it in really funny ways.  Finally we figured the best thing to do was make a new piece that went around the waist, and literally cut the breasts off the first piece and glue it on.  And wow, that worked pretty well actually!

And if you noticed the color is different, you are right.  Wasn't pleased with the earlier spray paint, found a better color at Micheal's Arts & Crafts Store, which has a bigger selection than Home Depot.  So I took this opportunity to repaint.  Man, I miss being able to walk into the Captain's Quarters on the Normandy and change color with the click of a button!

  
We have been experimenting with velcro to fasten the armor shut.  I was worried that it wouldn't be strong enough, well that wasn't the problem, it was too strong.  When taking the armor off, the hook and loop tape sticks to itself so well, it rips the hot glue off before it detaches from itself.  So we are going to try MORE hot glue, hahahaha.  And if that doesn't work, i tried putting it through my sewing machine and just sewing it to the foam.  That doesn't really work for the thick foam, but for the thin craft foam it works great!  So maybe I will also try sewing it to craft foam, and then gluing the craft foam onto the thick foam since the glue sticks to foam much better than the velcro.

We also did work on the male costume.  The heat gun is great for doing small areas, or bending the foam.  But for shaping you just can't beat the broiler in the oven.  We found that the 6" Styrofoam balls we bought for the breasts also work great for shaping the male codpiece.

So here is what we have so far for the male outfit!