I’m back with part 2 of Mei’s cosplay breakdown! This time I’ll be sharing her boot process. Part I covers her jacket if you want to check that out!
SUPPLIES:
- 4 sheets EVA Foam – 1/2″ thickness
- 1 large roll of thin foam (can be found at Michael’s
- 2 yards of blue spandex
- 1/4 yard of red spandex
- Leftover fur from Mei’s jacket
- Worbla
- Yellow and silver acrylic paint
- Silver buttons
Honestly, the boots were the last project I started, but the first to finish! I was the most terrified of making these, but I’m very happy with how they turned out. My biggest concern was that I needed to be able to wear my comfortable Clark’s shoes (I’ve fractured my foot twice over 3 years, so supportive footwear only!) and slip into the boots, so the structure was going to be key.
The main structure is all EVA foam – we bought a pack on amazon. Sam really helped with this part :) The bottom base is just an oval, traced over my shoe so there is about 2-3 extra inches of surface area around the sole. It has little raised pieces of foam on the toe and heel where I need to slip my foot in, so when I walk I’m not kicking around in the boot. It’s nice and snug so the shoe doesn’t have any wiggle room. We made a “cage” over the toe of the foot to create the large rounded look of the toes.
The back portion of the boot is the thick EVA Foam, but the entire boot is wrapped with a large sheet of thin craft foam (look for a roll like this). Everything is glued together with hot glue. To cover the toe of the boot, I cut a diamond notch out of the front so it could form around the round end.
Then came the most tedious part of the project, which is covering the boots. I had this great blue spandex fabric, but I didn’t want to just wrap it around the boot – I wanted it to be smooth. So, I ended up covering pieces of foam and sewing the spandex on top. Then I could wrap and glue the foam to the boots. The fabric/foam pieces were layered over a strip of fur, and I added silver buttons for accents.
The silver back piece of the boot is 1/4″ foam that was painted silver and glued to the fabric parts. The last bit of detailing I did was the bottom yellow – it’s worbla that I shaped over pieces of foam, so the bottom of the boots wouldn’t bend at all during the stress of wear. I painted it all yellow with acrylic paints. Then I just glued the fur to the top of the boots.
And voila! I’m extremely proud of these boots; it’s one of the strangest projects I’ve worked on and they came out great. While I am able to slip my foot into the boot, they’re impossible to wear for more than a few yards – they’re clunky and very hot! So I ended up carrying them most of the con and slipping into them for photos :)
Hopefully this tutorial was helpful!
