Belegarth

Been working on trying to get a faux wood grain on a shield however it just doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me. I'm useing the blue MC foam but the foam is just not smooth enough for it to work. Someone suggested faux wood wall paper. Personally this seems like a silly idea but what if it does work. Has anyone tried this before?
I suppose if the paper is more like a vinyl that stretches it would probably last a good while.

Not a clue about that one. I know somewhere online I found a faux wood plastidipped shield though. if you google it there are several references on the dag boards.

I think plasti-dip over foam, with plasti-dip over craft foam for shapes, and also wood burning on plasti-dip can make the texture effects that you are looking for.

A wood burner is OK. I'm not satisfied with the effect it has on the foam as it doesn't give me the level of detail I would really like. I think I'll just try the faux wood grain on a small bit of foam and see if that looks OK.

Plastidip on microcell foam is the way to go about it. My shield was done by a member in our realm. He painted it brown and then used a comb to drag striations of lighter brown and darker brown over it to look like stained wood grain. Epic looking.

Also, don't use the contact paper. I used to use it on the pommels of my Roman gladii and it looked like **** after a couple practices.

more like hrothgar the pale
http://www.dagorhir.com/forums/index.php/topic,15445.0.html

Tiberius Claudius wrote: He painted it brown and then used a comb to drag striations of lighter brown and darker brown over it to look like stained wood grain. Epic looking.

Interesting idea. I might try that. Are there any pictures of this? I've been doing several layers with a light brown on a dry brush with spray cans of darker brown wood stains.

Tiberius Claudius wrote:Also, don't use the contact paper. I used to use it on the pommels of my Roman gladii and it looked like **** after a couple practices.

I saw that type of self adhesive paper but I decided it wasn't for me due to how thin it looked. I knew it wouldn't last long or it wouldn't turn out looking like real wood grain. I'm looking for a thicker vinyl type of wall paper. This will most likely be coated with a urethane varnish to help protect it.

Remy the Wroth wrote:http://www.dagorhir.com/forums/index.php/topic,15445.0.html

Read it several times but I still would like more detail then what is possible with this style.

Remy the Wroth wrote:more like hrothgar the pale

Glass houses Remy....Glass houses....

whut

Appears to be wood grain fabric.

So I tried making some shields from wall paper and this is what I have come up with:


and a close up of the detail on one of the shields.


These shields have not seen much use so the durability on these is still questionable. So far I have only used these during two Amtgard practices and 1 light Belegarth practice. I will be using these shields for a few months to see any flaws and fixes that I can find. I will post my findings here and elsewhere when I can. So far this method it looks very promising. Here is a link to the pinterest board to read the basics of how I made them: http://pinterest.com/bryanhettinga/plastidip-larp-shields/

Hrothgar

* fine work, Hrothgar. Do you have any higher quality pictures? Maybe it's just the size these are blown up to, but on my screen they are a bit fuzzy. That aside, I think your shields turned out very well. The wood grain looks very realistic.

If you want some more resources and better feedback on the plasti-dip process, and to share your work with like minded artisans, join the Pastidip Artists group on Facebook. They have awesome resources in the files section, and the page is frequented by some extremely talented people who could give advice, critique your work, and with whom you can share your stuff, and know that it's appreciated.

Again, solid work, man. When you churn out some more, be sure to post it over in the Foam Smithing forum; would love to see it.

-Thurat-

-It's the camera and my not so steady hand that makes it a blurry mess. Also I'm not to experienced with sharing images on the forum so they are very blown up. I will try to get them re-sized later on this week.

-I will look into that plasti-dip facebook page. Thanks for letting me know about that.

-I will post more on the Foam Smithing forum for future projects. I posted the original question here because it sounded very noobish . After I made the shields I thought I would update with a set of pictures to show where I'm at with the answer to my question.

It was perfectly fine to update here. I just wanted to point you to a more frequented (and more appropriate) venue for your future works.

Cheers,

-Thurat-

If you don't have Photoshop, you can use this program to resize the images to whatever size you need before you upload them:

http://www.gimp.org/


Edit: Once you have GIMP installed, the image resize tool is found at:

Image >> Scale Image...