What you’ll need:
- Cosplay Clay—I got mine from my local art store, the brand being Artist’s Loft
- Red acrylic paint—I suggest using Plaid Crafts Fx Smooth Satin Red paint. It doesn’t crack and it looks really good when painted on.
- Paintbrushes—I mainly suggest a medium head bristle brush because it allows for more detail work and you can have a better grip on it to control the strokes.
- Masking tape—you’ll understand why soon.
- Red LED lights—I used about a two-to-three-foot string of them with a battery pack attached at the end, it ended up working pretty well for me.
- A hot glue gun.
- A bowl of water.
- A ruler—your basic one-foot ruler should do the trick.
- A clean place to work.
How to make:
Step one:
Gather all of the necessary supplies.
Step two:
Grab your cosplay clay, a good sizeable chunk, and roll it into a long snake about ten and a half inches long with a thickness of one inch. Then mold it into a circle and attach it with water so it sticks.
You can use the water to smooth out the seam too. Using water makes attaching and smoothing a lot easier since Cosplay Clay responds very well to water. Just make sure not to use too much else the clay will become sticky and quite possibly have pieces come off when touched. Then let it dry for at least twenty-four hours.
Step three:
Now that the base is dry, it’s time for a paint job! Yay! Grab your red paint and your brush but, before you start painting—here’s where that masking tape comes in handy, tape off the entire base except for one single strip that will go all around the interior of the base. Then you can start painting! I suggest putting the masking tape because this way, that single strip inside your base will look super smooth and straight. And it’ll look even cooler when you put on the LEDs! And of course, let the paint dry for about at least two to three hours. Then carefully remove the masking tape.
Step four:
LED time! Now that the paint has dried, time to have some fun with LEDs! Grab your LEDs—and if you got the same ones I got take them out of the package and unroll them and insert the battery into the battery pack. Else wise prepare your LEDs how it says on the instruction booklet provided. Once they ‘re all set up, heat up your glue gun—being sure to be extra careful since you will need it at a reasonably hot temperature. And after it’s well heated up, take your LEDs in one hand and grip your base and the glue gun in the other and slowly apply small strips of glue and gently press the LEDs down onto the glue. Do this around the entire interior of your base on the red strip that you painted earlier. If you have the one with a battery pack, just hot glue some Velcro to the exterior once it’s completely wrapped around and apply Velcro to the pack as well and just stick them together. It should have a pretty strong hold.
Step five:
The base should be completely made now! Yay! Now it’s time for the circles around it. First, grab another chunk of cosplay clay. Roll them into snakes as you did with the base. But roll these to be three inches long and one inch thick Make four of these and attach and smooth the seams like you did with the base and let them dry for at least twenty-four hours.
Step six:
Now that the circles are made and smooth, cut each one in half. Here’s where the bowl of water comes in handy the most. First, take one half the circle and attach it to the outside of the base and smooth it down with water. This will give it a very strong hold. Do this with the other three so it looks like you are making a square on the outside. Then take the other halves and repeat this step but attaching them to the inside so it looks like you are completing the circles once more. And of course, let them dry for at least two days. You made more this time, so it’ll take more time to solidify completely.
Step seven:
As soon as they’re dry, grab your red paint and masking tape again. With the masking tape, tape off the surrounding areas of the small circles so there is only a strait long strip—just like you did with the base, on the inside top half of the circle that faces outward, and the top half of the circle that is inside the base. Once it’s taped off and only a line of white is showing, paint those areas with the red paint. Once the paint is dry, take off the tape and your chakram should currently look like the picture off to the side.
Step eight:
On to the next step! With another good chunk of cosplay clay, grab about eight small balls and form them into Hershey kisses—you’ll understand why soon. After you have formed all of these, use your water as you did with the smaller circles and attach the Hershey kiss shaped clay pieces to the inside of the Chakram base between each of the small circles. Then take the next four and attach them to the inside of the small circle that is facing the outside of the chakram’s base. Let these dry for a whole day. The end result should look like the picture off to the side.
Step nine:
Now take some more clay and create eight shapes that look like the shape the shape to side. Then use your water and attach them to the outside of each of the small Hershey kiss shapes you created in the last step. Let these dry for a whole day as well.
Step ten:
Here’s the final step! Grab two medium-sized balls of cosplay clay and roll them into two long snakes. Make them as long as the inside of your main circle. First, attach the two snakes together in a cross-like shape. And make them stick best by adding water to them.
Now that they are attached, attach the piece to the middle of the chakram sealing it with water. Wait a day for it to dry. Once it’s dry, tape off the ends in a small circle with masking tape and paint the rest black. Once that’s dry, remove the tape, and voila! You now have a finished chakram! Repeat the steps above and then, you officially have two finished chakrams ready to go for your Axel Cosplay!
Have fun, and go get ‘em!
The Rebel Fae 