themiyazakifan:

Want to make Link’s shield? Heres a tutorial how to do it. At MegaCon alot of people asked me how I made it. It was pretty easy actually..

I used this tutorial as a base. The shield that she made on this website was actually from Ocarina of Time and i modified it to be the shield from Twilight Princess. I also used different materials to make it. Basically all i used was her instructions and her patterns!

So the supplies u will need:
-2 pieces of Foam board
- Foam board knife/cutter
-Acrylic paint and paint brushes 
-String or wire (preference)
-Stencils
-Silver buttons/ round objects (LOL)
-guerrilla glue and hot glue 
- Spray paint 
- Velcro 

 First we took our first piece of foam board and measured to match the pattern found on that website and matched it to the dimensions.

I dont exactly remember the dimensions and its too blurry to see on the photo. Sorry! But what we did was measured the foam board and matched it to the pattern. We basically used the entire piece. Foam board sizes vary so this might be sort of a size preference thing.

Basically what the pattern does is makes the base part of the shield (the blue part) and then puts it under another part of the pattern (which I had to create myself because the website doesnt include that pattern) which becomes the silver part. So this is the blue base. I would advice you make a pattern out of poster board before drawing on the foam board just so you get everything right.

After measuring and making sure everything was symmetrical, I outlined in sharpie and then we went to cut it. 

We used a normal crafting knife. BE CAREFUL!! If you are using foam board… it CRACKS very easily! We messed up so many times and had to redo this because of all the cracks somethings had. Also it is very hard to cut precisely with thick foam board. So dont rush. Take your time!

((notice in the picture below - the edges are very rough. that is from the knife. so seriously..be careful))

As you can see from below, we cut out the entire thing. It doesnt matter if the edges are rough or not because we will be overlaying the silver outline later!

 Now to curve it! As you can see from the reference picture… the shield has a slight curve to it. I felt like the foam board was too stiff so I decided to curve it. You can skip this part if you dont want a curve in the shield.
TO CURVE IT: I took a sponge and wet it. Then I lightly rubbed the sponge on the back of the foam board (choose which side you want to be the front of the shield when you do this). Then I started to softly bend the shield in the curve form. Do this until you feel like its bent enough. Dont apply too much water because then the foam board will get soggy and break easily.  BE CAREFUL!!! The foam board will crack if you dont do this carefully and lightly.  I let it sit over night and then it was curved. 

I hung the shield up and spray painted it blue because this is the shield’s base. We will get to the silver part later. I let it dry over night and here it is!

Now for the silver part!! We will overlay this on the blue part.
We used the same pattern for the blue base. We drafted a pattern out of posterboard and cut the inside out so it would overlay nicely. This is where it  gets tricky. Based on your shields size, you have to calculate how big u want the silver part to be.  Drawing the pattern on the foam board. Then we cut out the pattern after drawing the outline on the inside that we wanted to cut out.

So once its cut out, repeat the step to curve it. Do the same thing. Just wet a sponge and apply it to the side of the shield u want to bend and bend it that way. not hard though. 

Now we are going to do is add the top part of the shield. From the reference picture it looks like a totally different part on the shield. Based on my shield’s size, I measured and created a pentagon.. However, since foamboard is thick and you overlay the pentagon, there will be a space between the base and the pentagon. 

You need to cut out another piece to fill this gap so the pentagon and the base of the shield will be touching. 

 

Glue the smaller pentagon onto the bigger pentagon. Dont glue the pentagon onto the outer part of the shield just yet because its much easier to put detail on it when its free.

 This is how the front should look. It should slide right in if you measured and cut the shape correctly.

The back should look like this.  

Spray painting time! I used a shiny silver spray. Let it dry before you touch it again. 

As you can see, I will spray the pentagon separately. This is where we will be going into more of the details of the shield. I cut out 3 triangles and painted them with gold aycrilic paint. I put about 4~5 coats on just because i got some low quality paint. I put them aside to let them dry.
 As you can see from the reference, there are details on the shield like a design and some button/pin things. I made a pattern for the design and cut out the pattern on poster board. 

It should look something like this when you are done. This part is tricky because of how small the design is.

Glue the design onto the pentagon with hot glue.

Make sure you add the buttons/pins on before u glue the pentagon onto the shield. I just used shiny button things.

We added these bulky design parts at the top and bottom of the shield. There are double of both. So we drafted a pattern out of poster board and then transferred it onto foam board. **WARNING** I cant tell you how many times this took to cut out. Foam board cracks very easily. Especially with small/detailed pieces like the ones above. Be careful with how much pressure you put on the knife when cutting because it will crack the foam board. It took me a good 5~6 times to get it just right.

At this time you can glue the silver base onto the blue base. Make sure everything lines up and use guerrilla glue.

Once you’ve cut out the designs, glue them on with guerrilla glue. Make sure they are symmetrical!!

Also at this time you can glue on the triangles and the pentagon too. When glueing the pentagon on… be sure to apply pressure to it to make it stick. Let them dry overnight. I am using a bad reference picture. It is inaccurate when it comes to the red part’s design.

 We will now be working on the red design on the shield’s base. I used stencils to make my design and cut out the inside to paint it.  

For the wing part, I just flipped it over and painted with the other side. Make sure its dry though. Do the painting in portions if you use the stencils. I used red acyrilic paint and applied ALOT of layers. Probably like 6~7. Do this until u think the coats are even and not see through on the blue spray paint. I dont have any pictures of the painting process just because it was so messy and I was very concentrated for hours and hours trying to get it just right.

 I let it dry overnight and as you can see it didnt stick to the spray paint very well. I applied more layers until it was even and not transparent.  

After the paint is dry… add the buttons and pins along with the string. The shield has the string make a triangle around the yellow triangle while connecting to the buttons around it. I used this sparkly string and took it apart and only used 1 of them. Im sure you could find this at Joanns 

I used hot glue to apply the buttons and string. Heres an up close picture.. Also look how even the paint is *__*

 

I also sprayed a glaze-type spray paint to give it a nice finish and prevent scratches or dirt from getting onto the main part of the shield. 
For the back part of the shield: I used 2 velcro straps in order to grab the shield and slip my arm in and out.

You are done!! 

Click to see shield in action!

Please message me if you have any questions, if i should describe something more, or if you are confused!

GLHF!

Awesome.