For Denver Comic Con this year, my daughter was going to be X-23 (both the Logan and the comic book version). Being that my daughter is only five, I needed her claws to be safe, which pretty much meant no metal or wood. I also needed them to be durable. Basically whenever my kiddo dresses up like a character, she starts acting like them. I fully expected her to be slashing her way through two days at the con and didn’t want her claws to only make it five minutes. I scoured YouTube looking for tutorials but came up empty handed. Everything I could find was either balsa wood or metal, which wasn’t going to work for so many reasons. So, I decided to make my own using a thermoplastic, which I have found to be durable yet bendy and non lethal.
I ended up using a new thermoplastic called Cosplayflex which I bought at a store called Life of the Party in Fort Collins. The Cosplayflex heated up quickly, stuck to itself and was easily moldable. The claws ended up being far easier than I imagined. It only took about two hours start to finish and seven easy steps.
STEP 1: I measured our daughter’s hand and decided on the size of claws we wanted and got a pattern on paper. I cut out a pattern with paper. I ended up making three copies of each piece of the pattern since I wanted to stack them together to make the claws thicker. I could have stayed with one or two, but I wanted the claws to be sturdy and give the illusion of metal.
STEP 2: I cut out the patterns traced on the Cosplayflex. It is easy to cut with just regular scissors.
STEP 3: I heated up the pieces of the claws and layered the Cosplayflex three deep. I then used my fingers to make the plastic take the shape I wanted.
STEP 4: Once it looked pretty solid, I used a dremel to smooth the edges to make them look more like blades. This step was fun to do and gave great results, but I would recommend doing it outside – lots of dust to clean up in our basement.
STEP 5: When it was smooth, I sprayed it with clear Plasti Dip and let that dry.
STEP 6: Then, I sprayed it with a silver Rustoleum spray paint and topped it off with a clear topcoat spray paint.
STEP 7: Wear and enjoy!
These claws outlasted two days at a con with a five year old holding them and slashing with them the entire time, so I would say the Cosplayflex held up great. The paint chipped a bit, so I probably needed two coats of clear topcoat, but other than that…success.
Check out the video below for pictures of this process.
