Material Monday: Advanced Wonderflex

So, I had to showcase this. Today’s not so much about what wonderflex is, or how to work with it.

‘Today, is about what you can do with it.

This girl created Wheatley from Portal 2 with wonderflex and I just had to show you!

Wheatley as florists foam

Here, she glued florists foam together then sanded it into a circle. She then drew on the patterns for his outer form

This is where she added layers of wonderflex to build up the shape.

Here she had already cut Wheatley in half and proceeded to cover the insides with wonderflex. This was to make sure that Wheatley would fit back together.

You can see that she’s now covered the inside completely, fitted Wheatley back together and then used latches and some more wonderflex to put the two sides together.

And here’s Wheatley finished. She used Apoxie Scuplt overtop of the Wonderflex to create the hard edges she needed. Check out her full walkthrough on her blog:

htp://furincosplay.blogspot.com

Material Monday: Wonderflex

Sheets of Wonderflex

Our second Material Monday is on Wonderflex! I was really excited to start on this post until I actually got down and tried to research. There is a ton of information on Wonderflex from people, so, I’m not going to try and cover it all, but just the basics. Maybe on one MM day we’ll cover advanced Wonderflex. Who knows?

*** I am not affiliated with any of the products or their companies***

Wonderflex:

What it is: A thermoplastic that can be shaped with heat (a hair dryer or paint stripper or even hot water)

What it comes in: Rolled sheets of white plastic with the thread pattern on one side and smooth on the other.

What it does: EVERYTHING! And with this, I mean. People have made helmets, gauntlets, full suits of armor, weapons, this stuff is truly only limited by your experience in working with it and what you want to do.

How you work with it: This will vary little by little depending on whose tutorial you are following. The most basic thing is that you need a heat source to shape it. You wave your heat source (usually a heat gun or paint stripper. Don’t ‘wave’ hot water around) across the surface until you see the Wonderflex become almost transparent. As it heats up, you’ll notice that the WF goes from being a solid white to a translucent white–that is when you can stop heating it and start working with it. Be careful! Wonderflex can get extremely hot (so hot I needed leather gloves to work with it at one point) so you don’t want to shape it bare around your skin.

What can go over it: Spray paint, acrylic, dry wall spackle, bondo…If you want a smooth paint finish, it is in your best interest to use a smoothing agent before you paint.

Places to Buy: Dani’s Cosplay Supplies, and Dazian. For reasons of impartiality, I’m not going to recommend which place to get them from, there are plenty of places with reviews of each.

Downsides to Wonderflex: It gets very hot and has a texture that needs to be gotten rid of before painting. Non flexible. Will also loose shape in high heat (1 hr of direct sunlight at 90 degrees or 115-120 degree temperature)

Upsides to Wonderflex: Super easy to use, extremely durable and can withstand a lot of abuse at cons and in suitcases.

Gallery of Wonderflex Projects:

Wonderflex costume from Kamui

Arm made from Wonderflex

This full suit was created from Wonderflex

This Keyblade was from Wonderflex