Hey everyone! Welcome to this week’s What the Bleep Am I Doing?! A Rebel’s Guide To… Last time I talked about making details for armor with Worbla which you can find the article here if you want to check it out. For this week though, I’m going to go a little bit deeper into working with this material. There’s a lot to cover when it comes to Worbla so this will surely have multiple parts but let’s start off with part one, shall we?
Cutting to size
This I find is not always easy. You most definitely need a good pair of sharp scissors to cut out your Worbla pieces. Safety scissors are not advised to be used. Believe me, I tried, and it doesn’t end well. You’ll also want to use a pattern or place your EVA foam object on it to make the shape—assuming that you are using Worbla to cover the EVA foam, seeing that it’s the most common use for Worbla.
Heating
Heating up Worbla is quite similar to heating up EVA foam in the case that it needs to be spread evenly throughout to take effect on the material. But, unlike EVA foam Worbla will heat up a lot faster and cool down even faster. So because of this, you’ll want to work pretty quick with it but also make sure to be careful because burning fingers is very much a thing.
Molding
I’ve covered a bit of this topic in my last article with making vine details, but there is so much more when it comes to making details with Worbla. If I am to be completely honest it’s not the easiest of tasks. But that’s why I’m here to help! What I recommend so far is to mold the Worbla around an object that is or is close to what you want the details to look like. Or in the case of the vines from my last article, you can take a picture and freehand it.
For an example of what I mean with shaping it around an object let’s use a mask. Just cut out the Worbla that is just a little bit bigger than the mask, place it over it, heat the Worbla up, and voila! You know have Worbla in the shape of that mask! Let it cool off though of course else wise it’s going to fall completely apart.
Priming and Painting
Just like with EVA foam it will need to be primed but not as much because it won’t soak up the paint as much as the EVA foam will. But priming still helps protect the Worbla and of course you need to paint it.
That’s all for this article as per usual when I find out more I will gladly share it with all of you so we can all be less confused together! If you have any questions whatsoever feel free to ask, I’d love to help!
Lastly, if you wanna support Rebel Fae and get exclusive access to things such as work in progress posts and stories I don’t post here or anywhere else, hop over to my Ko-fi page and donate. I’m eternally grateful for all that y’all do for me, you guys give me the strength to keep going so thank you from the bottom of my heart!
That’s all for now…
Rebel Fae out!
The Rebel Fae 
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