DIY: Making Your Own Fake Leather

#Leather isn’t an uncommon element for #costumes & #cosplays, but it doesn’t have to be the real thing. Real leather can be cost prohibitive (not just the leather, but the tooling also can be pricey), becomes hot to wear or there may be objections to using and/or wearing animal products.

To solve these dilemmas, there’s an easy solution: make your own faux or fake leather. The question is how? The most obvious solution is to use faux leather fabric (or pleather); but if you need something that’s thicker than pleather you can use some foam underneath it, or you could just transform foam into your own homemade fake leather. You could even paint fabric to make it look leathery.

The first video tutorial below by Ginny Di talks about combining pleather with foam to create realistic looking fake leather. To do this you’ll need pleather, paints & foam.

If you want to make your own fake leather from foam only, you can try a technique presented by Buddy Cosplay. To do this, you’d need several tools, including an iron, heat gun, paints, foam, aluminum foil.

The next video is similar to the first, but isn’t as detailed. It’s by ButtercupBrix.

There are other similar tutorial videos online. The key to remember here is that you don’t have to use actual leather and you can let your creativity take you where you want. You could even make a gas mask that looks like leather by combining these techniques with the gas mask tutorial that we just posted.

References

• Ginny Di’s YouTube Channel
• Buddy Cosplay’s YouTube Channel
• ButtercupBrix’s YouTube Channel

DIY: A Metal Bionic Arm Costume Piece

If you want to build a bionic arm for your next #cosplay, David Guyton has created the templates on how to create one using metal and leather. This is another more advanced method of #costume making as it requires working with metal and leather. Thus, safety is a very important consideration to avoid injury while working with metal.

The resulting prop as demonstrated by David Guyton is very impressive.

DIY: How to Make Infinity Gauntlet

Here’s a video tutorial made by David Guyton on how to make a #Marvel #Infinity gauntlet. This is a more advanced type of #costume making as it involves working with metal and electronics. Please be sure you wear the proper protective gear before working with metal (which can have very sharp edges) and hammers.

This particular gauntlet design also includes use of a leather glove, upon which metal is riveted. There are also a lot of small articulated parts that go onto the glove fingers. Thus, patience is a must with this particular project.