Raven Cosplay Belt Tutorial

I made this myself for a cosplay when I was on a time crunch, had limited funds and couldn't order anything online that would get to me in time.

A lot of the cosplay belt tutorials were either too complicated, expensive to make or just didn't look quite right for me. You don't have many craft item options in NZ compared to other countries so a lot of tutorials were undoable for me anyway. I just had to get creative and make my own. It turned out really well, I think. Cost me hardly anything as well.

I made six gems for my belt and one for my cape 🙂

At least 4 foam spheres - you can get from your average craft shop. Images below for sizing but it's not an exact art, just don't go too small.

You can make 2 gems per sphere - if you like more gems on the belt than get more spheres obviously

Red balloons - one for each gem you want and as many spares as you think you'll need as they're easy to mess up.

Gold chunky bangles or if that's not an option, get some thick chunky bangles with gold paint - try and get yellow/pale coloured ones if possible. I bought poster paint because it was a dollar and had a great colour but other paints should be fine.

Normal adhesive tape.

A plain gold chain belt.

A serrated knife

Optional - foil or cling film for drying painted bangles on

Cut your spheres in half - your sphere probably has a handy line down the middle to guide you.

Hold your half spheres flat side down and using a bangle held in the centre on top draw a circle around the bangle.

Then proceed to cut off excess foam from around the edges of the bangle. Don't make the cuts too clean or too perfect around the edges, you can always trim more down later. You just want to be left with a kind of cylinder shape .

Now, looking at this shape from the side and using that line you drew around the bangle to guide you, try to cut off excess foam that so that your left with a dome that will be able to just fit it's edges inside a bangle. So essentially having the edges of the dome be the approximate height of the bangle. Don't go too short, you can shorten later if you need.

You should be left with a foam dome that can kind of be jammed inside a bangle and be quite stuck in there. Pop the dome into a bangle and trim off the edges of it needs a little more removed to fit.

Once it's for inside, hold the bangle on its side to look at it from a birds eye view and cut off any excess foam to smooth the under side.

Repeat the process with the rest of the gems you're making for your belt and cape.

Basically, put your foam domes into the red balloons, trim off any excess balloon, tape up the underside so the balloon is stretched over the dome and fits really nicely and then pop inside the bangles.

I cut the balloons at a funny angle to start with because the tip of the balloon is quite thick and show as a point at the top of balloon, so I put the domes in kind of sideways into the balloons so the tip of the balloon would be on the edge of the dome

Sounds weird but when you try it, you'll see what I mean.

If you don't have gold bangles like I didn't, paint the edges by slowly spinning through gold paint in a shallow dish if you have liquid paint. Leave to dry on any non-stick surface that is allowed to get paint on - I used foil but cling film or plastic bags will work, as long as the paint won't stick to it when it dries. I suggest doing a thin layer and leaving it overnight, then another thin layer the next. I did both layers of the paint the night before and it didn't set as well as I'd have liked.

Obviously if you have spray, just take the gems out and paint them then pop the gems back in.

I ended up getting liquid paint on my gems but improvised and holding them still with a spatula, used a paintbrush to swirl the gold paint in circular motions on the gem and it gave them a cool metallic effect that looked good in photos.

The photos don't really do them justice haha. They turned out great, some better than others but I didn't leave enough time to dry the paint.

Also, the green and pink bangles I had were too dark for the paint and needed extra layers of paint so they didn't turn out as nicely as the others.

Basically as the title says, tape gems onto your belt, fix to your cape (I just used a safety pin) and look like a boss. I didn't have time to paint a raven on the gem on my cape but oh well.

I didn't get a picture of the completed belt except for my cosplay. Dummy. Ah well.

Even though this uses cheap materials, it holds together really well. The tape holds the gems on just fine since they're so light and the gems themselves will not fall apart because the foam and rubber from the balloon really fixes them in place. It looks great in pics as well 😊

This is my first instructable - I'm not saying this is the best but for someone without much cash, time or mad skill, it'll do nicely. I racked my brains to come up with something this cheap and thought other broke people might appreciate it 😂.