Hot glue embossing

I am in a week long lull between fittings and have 2 days off so I decided to take those days and work on something for myself while I wait for my client to get back from a trip.

I've been fixing up the steampunk costume I made into Captain America last year to look more like his Captain America :  The first Avenger costume.

Step one was buy some brown gloves and boots ( boots are here, still waiting on the gloves).

Step two was make a nice Star to go on my coat. I got a friend who does machine embroidery to embroider a lace star for me, but it was a bit small for the coat:

So I ended up finding a template online for Caps actual chest star and cut that out of some white vinyl.  I then attached the lace star to the vinyl one:

It looks much better now I think.


Step 3 was fix up the gun.  I bought a Nerf: Rebelle gun because it had a nice shape to it and is con legal.  But it was still a bit too plain for me.  So since the coat and skirt of my costume are  Jacquard printed fabrics, I googled Jacquard patterns and found a couple I liked.

I then took some carbon paper and taped it to my gun, taped the picture over that and transferred it to the plastic.

Then I got out the hot glue gun.  I had seen hot glue gun embossing done by Amathyst Angel in her prop blog and have wanted to try it out for myself.  It is as messy as I figured it would be and perhaps a bit...imprecise?  But it was my first try. There were glue webs and tails everywhere, but that is what craft knifes are for. Also, since I was adding some wonderflex to the gun anyway (to cover up the disclaimer on one side)  I had to use a heat gun.  Well naturally hot glue when hit by the heat from a heat gun goes gluey again and sets better, so any lumpy bumpy areas were smoothed out by a quick blast from the heat gun and gravity.

Here is the end result:

Originally I was gonna do the entire top design in wonderflex, but when I heated it up, the tiny pieces got stuck to themselves by accident.  So I said screw it and finished it in hot glue.

The entire thing is going to get spray painted silver and then air brushed to make it look better, so you wont see all the mess of lines in Sharpie/carbon paper.  Here's hoping it looks as cool as I think it will when it is all done!


Step 4 will be making the belt and all of the pouches, plus a gun holster from vinyl.