These props (sometimes called “boffers”) are made of foam around a lightweight core, crafted to resemble historical or fictional arms & armor while actually being quite safe to bop each other with, typically used in Live-Action Role-Playing Games.
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Glowing runes, an angry octopus, deeply-carved and weathered wood. A shield commissioned with some specific fun elements to create. I’ve made a shield before, and I’ve made glowing runes before, but it was an interesting challenge to combine the two. This is also the first large project I’ve done since obtaining a Cricut, which gives See more
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The creation story behind this one is pretty fun. I was asked to come up with a boffer to make for one of the junior-league players as a birthday present, but since we weren’t sure of an exact design, I asked a set of questions about the player’s combat style and aesthetic preferences that were See more
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As a commission for a new LARPer who loves cats, I fashioned this sword with pawprints, cat’s tail, and a face/silhouette with glowing eyes! The blade uses the same composite foam technique as most of my rapiers: A layer of closed-cell foam with beveled edges along each side of the blade, plus an insert of See more
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Three rapiers, alike in dignity (although personally I prefer the middle one), in fair adventuring where we lay our scene. For 17th-century fashion, an essential part of any complete outfit. The red-handled version without a straight crossguard is based on the same design as the dark-bladed rapier from last year. Historically, most rapiers did have See more
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Polearms are a special challenge in LARP, since they’ve got to remain strong and rigid enough to maneuver as six-foot-long foam weapons in mock combat, while, as usual, being being padded enough to not hurt anyone and being light as possible. These spears represent a test of carbon fiber tubes from a site with a See more
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eheheahahahha. ohohoho. etc. It’s Halloween time, and that means Spooky Crafting time. Welcome to my lab. What better celebration than making festive, decorative, throwable skulls? (And then a festive, decorative, safe-to-fight-with scythe.) First, you’ve got to carve a skull out of squishy, open-cell foam, and then you’ve got to cover all its complicated 3D features See more
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The briefing for this piece was “a mage staff of gnarled wood with embedded pieces of fiery crystalline.” I offered to fulfill this and also make the fiery crystalline glow, which involved additional tricks with lightweight electronics embedded below layers of foam and illusion film. You can kinda see in the second view above that See more
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This set was commissioned for a messenger (and duelist) character who draws inspiration from the symbols of Hermes, Olympian messenger of the ancient Greek gods. As the lower layer of the caduceus inlay, I used a blue illusion film with a wave pattern, so that as the sword moves through the air, the caduceus shimmers See more
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One of my most intricate accomplishments of duct tape crafting. Requested by a player whose brother is a blacksmith who crafts real Damascus Steel. With an added line of crystalline in the middle, which really pops in the sunlight. The term “Damascus Steel” is used in a variety of ways, many of which differ from See more
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Along with the mage staff, this piece was designed to be flexibly presented by the Game Master as any number of different special/magical in-game items, so rather than having a specific energy or type of aesthetic, it has decorations that could be taken in many different directions. For the weaving-plant pattern, I drew from this See more
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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 See more
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Objective: Replica of this historical Four Tiger Sword in the collection of the National Museum of Korea It’s called this (“four tiger sword,” saingeom) because historically it was created in the year of the tiger, in the month of the tiger, in the day of the tiger, in the hours of the tiger. More info See more
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We all love a bit of drama, right? The very high-contrast palette of black and chrome here provides a very theatrical look to this piece. This is really my crowning achievement in terms of lightness. The whole thing is about 3 feet long, and weighs 4 and a half ounces (just over a quarter of See more
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I achieved some really exciting lighting effects with modern lightweight LED strips and some engineering cunning. After crafting a variety of boffers, I eventually decided to check out how other people were doing it. Surprisingly few were using carbon fiber, which I believe is the optimal material. Much more common was fiberglass, which is heavier See more
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For a classic bardic character, I created this actually-playable lute that is also safe to bonk people with. It’s paired with a sword that has a guard in the shape of a golden treble clef and a line of sheet music twisting all along the blade. This is really an example of my “anything worth See more
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This piece is a direct replica of a historical rapier in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dated to circa 1540. Also, it’s very shiny. Kudos to the Met Museum for making available so many different angles of the historical rapier, including directly facing each side, which made it considerably easier to construct See more
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This piece was prompted by wanting to make something more beautiful, elegant, and sweeping. It’s based upon a design by Arms & Armor, itself based upon a piece in the Musée de l’Armée in Paris, featured in The Rapier and Small-Sword, 1460-1820 by A V B Norman. I love how the lighting strikes the chrome surface, See more
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Sometimes I just like to have fun making props to fill out the world. Here are some of the more fun ones, as well as some other items that I haven’t made full posts about. 🞂 Stein! I’m particularly chuffed about this design because those dark grey bands around the sides aren’t just for decoration, See more
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. See more
Nico's Workshop 