This piece was created as a flexible prop that could be used in a variety of circumstances, and as a physical representation for a variety of items, for my friend’s LARP league.

Carving a sphere by hand out of two chunks of open-cell foam (it’s called “multipurpose foam” at Home Depot but I often hear it called “couch foam” since that’s its usual purpose) is much harder than it sounds, so I was proud of getting it approximately right on the first try.

Here’s a peek at my design process — I originally shaped the curves as these smooth prongs, but then thought it could use a little more energy and interest along the edges, which is how I eventually wound up with the 90-degree angles in the finished product.

For the first two, I manually attached the angle, but once I figured out where I wanted it to rest, I cut it out as part of the rest of the prongs.

The lattice along the staff is the central cool part of this design. For this, I cut out long strips of closed-cell polyethylene foam (the same as in the prongs) and wound one around the staff, including standoff pieces to keep it held at the right distance away. Then, I wound a piece in the opposite direction, cutting out a cross half-lap joint. Here’s a visualization from Craftsman Space.

The standoffs holding them at the right distance from the staff were very important so that the joints would occur at the right places, but once I wound all four strands, the joints themselves held the whole thing in the right approximate position, so the standoffs were no longer needed.

The starry design on the staff wasn’t planned much, I just cut out stars semi-randomly from a starfield image. I did wrap that wood-colored tape diagonally around, though, to give it that sense of spiraling imagery, and added some diamonds with strong 90-degree angles between the gold prongs as contrast. It’s the little details that really make props pop visually and catch the imagination.