Most of my effort went into the boards. First I bought some insulation foam from Home Depot and cut them in half. (Extruded polystyrene).
Then I cut a paper outline and drew it on the board.
I then cut the shape out with a hot wire. For my board, I wanted a thicker board so I had glued two of the board together. I used Elmer's glue since most glues will melt styrofoam. I learned that unfortunatly that takes FOREVER to dry. After 2 days when I finally cut the shape out, I had glue leaking all over. I found out later that I could have used Liquid Nails (which isn't in the glue aisle at home depot). That woulda dried faster and worked way better. I put some weights on the cut out pieces to home them together tightly while the Elmer's finished drying.
I now had 2 cut-out boards that I took to Ka Mun's house to finish.
We sanded all the pieces down. Doesn't Ka Mun look cute with a mask on?
When we were done, I did the happy dance with Ka Mun's sister Yee.
Next we painted it with a "Foam Coat." The stuff worked pretty well but I thought it was way too thin. Like water. Then halfway through we realized that was because we never stirred the can. Now it was way too thick. Like oatmeal. *sigh* It caused it to not be the consistancy I wanted, but when it hardened it was good enough. I used about a gallon of the stuff to do both boards. And of course, forgot to take pictures. After this was done, I sanded it again to get rid of the rough spots where it gooped up or dripped. We used extra on the edges to make them even stronger. It was smooth but still bumpy and I was afraid to sand off too much or I'd risk losing strength.
After the foat coat dried we painted using latex acrylics. Two coats.
Don't eat the paint. It tastes like crap.
This is what they looked like assembled. We didn't actually connect the pieces yet though. I mailed it all to California (only $30 priority!) which was a story in and of itself. In California Clem epoxy'd on some velcro which we used to stick it all together. The velcro lets us take it back apart for easy travel/shipping.
Ta da! I think they turned out pretty well. The surface isn't as smooth as I'd have liked but it wasn't bad for my first real project.