Hoshizora Rin Little Devil DIY Prop tutorial

I finally finished the remaining piece of my Little Devil cosplay which has been pretty arduous considering my lack of fancy tools but it has been a fulfilling experience and I learned new techniques. Full worklog of the cosplay will be up as soon as I get decent full body shot of the completed costume.

This is the third part of my Hoshizora Rin Little Devil ver. cosplay project. For the complete worklog, you can check out this post.

Materials:

• Rubber sheet / craft foam
• 1m pvc pipe
• thin cardboard
• pink non stretch fabric
• A fake rose & leaves (at least three)
• beads & string
• plastic folder (you won't be needing much)
• black, red, pink & gold paint
• wood/white glue
• super glue/contact cement
• hot glue
• crack filler (should dry hard and can be sanded down)
• paint brush
• cutter / x-acto knife
• sand paper / dremel

1. Sketch your draft on paper first. For proportionate sizing, I used the palm of my hand as reference and drew a slightly bigger shape around it.

2. Cut out your final pattern and separate the arrowheads. 

3. Trace several identical pieces of the main body on craft foam/rubber sheet. 

The number of pieces may depend on your desired thickness and the foam/sheet's thickness. Since I'm using a 2mm rubber sheet (because I'm too stingy to buy thicker ones when I already have a huge bundle of 2mm rubber sheet rolling around my room), I cut out about 11 pieces and stacked them together with glue.

I used pins to keep them in place while the glue dries

4. Once you're completely certain that the glue is dry and the pieces won't move about, trim the sides with a cutter to round out the edges. It doesn't have to be neat as long as you get your desired shape. You'll be cleaning those out later.

you can see the huge difference here when you round out the edges

5. Smooth out those imperfections with a dremel/sandpaper. This part can get pretty messy and takes a lot of patience and hard work especially if you're only using sandpaper just like me (who is too broke for fancy tools) so....just hang in there *0*)/

ja-jaaan!~

6. Now on to the arrowheads. Trace the pattern onto a thin cardboard. Make two pieces for each head and then fold on the center, lengthwise.

7. Align each pair together with the inside fold facing each other and tape the sides.

I apologize if i can't explain it properly but it should look something like above

8. Fit the arrowheads on the tips of the fork (err... i think it was called prongs? lol). Notice the open space at the bottom where the pieces meet? Yeah that needs to be covered. Before gluing the pieces together, trace the shape for the cover pattern first just like how I did below (or if you have other better methods, I was just winging the entire thing). Once you're done with the pattern, glue the arrowheads in place first and then fit the covers after.

click the photo to enlarge

Don't worry about obvious seam lines, tiny gap holes or uneven surfaces. Cover it up with a filler then smooth everything out with sand paper after it dries.

9. After the main shape is done and sanded, check for obvious seams lines or gaps and cover them up with the filler. Sand again after it dries for a smoother finish. You can repeat the process if you feel that the seam lines are still not covered enough.

should look something like this

10. For that piece attached to the bottom of the fork, I happen to found a slightly dense stress ball lying around and thought maybe I could use it (shaping/carving it up will be harder if the ball is too soft.). It turned out to be a mistake so I highly suggest you come up with other alternatives. I still decided to just go with it because I was too tired to make one from scratch.

First I cut the ball open equally in half then gradually carve it according to how it will sit once I assembled them altogether. Since I wanted my prop to have removable parts for easy storage, I also carved a chamber inside where I can easily insert/remove the pvc pipe.

11. Before gluing it together, I also inserted a piece of plastic folder to protect the foam from wearing out made by the pvc pipe. Glue pieces together.

12. Attach the ball and the fork together. Clean up gaps with the crack filler.

test assembly

13. The details on the pvc pipe are also a carved and sanded rubber sheet. Same way with how I did the top part.

14. Prime the entire thing.

There are a lot of priming techniques/materials out there so choose what's best for you. I just used white glue.

shinyyyy

15. Paint.

I painted a black base on gold-colored areas to make the gold stand out more.

This is where I realized my mistake in using a stressball. The paint cracks when I put more force on it because the material easily deforms so I had to be really careful every time I assemble the pieces.

16. For the ribbon bow, I used a non-stretch pink fabric and painted black polka dots in a check board pattern. There are plenty of bow tutorials online so I won't be elaborating on how i did that part.

17. For the fake rose on the bow center piece, I used this tutorial to make one from scratch.

18. The heart was also carved from the same rubber sheet. I stacked four heart pieces together and used the same process as the fork to get the clean shape I want.

19. Prime then paint it pink.

20. For the bead string, I won't be elaborating much as it is self explanatory but I used about a meter length of string. I then sandwiched the looped end of the string(you know that loop formed when you knot a string so that the beads doesn't fall off) between the ribbon bow and the rose base and secured with hot glue.

At this point, I realized I forgot to add the leaves so I had to gently pry them apart, glue the fake leaves and then put them together again.

21. Before attaching the ribbon bow, I wound a piece of pink ribbon strip around the pipe first just below where it meets the fork to make it look like the bow was actually tied there. Then I hot glued the bow in place right on top of the ribbon strip (hopefully that didn't get confusing lol).

22. Viola! The top is removable for easy packing/storing. I've also considered inserting magnets where the removable parts connect just in case it loosens up but the snug fit and friction is enough to keep it in place for now as long as there are no any rigorous movement done to it but I'm taking note of adding them once the friction wears out.

Questions? Feel free to comment and I'll try to answer as clearly as I can :D