EVA foam is one of the most common materials used in cosplay. It’s used for armor, props, weapons, and tons of other costume pieces! But just plain pieces of EVA foam can be kind of boring, and so it’s important to add details to your foam builds. But how do you do it? How can you add details to EVA foam?
It’s actually super easy! I’ve been building foam cosplay pieces for almost four years now, and during that time, I’ve learned a ton of different methods to add details to EVA foam. In this post, I’ll be going over five! These will help give you a good base of adding details to foam, and really help bring your cosplay builds to life!
Scoring & Heating EVA Foam
The first way to add detail to EVA foam is by scoring and heating the foam. To do this, take a boxcutter or craft knife, and make cuts that only go partway through the foam. Then, heat up the foam using a heat gun. The cuts will open up with the heat, giving you nice, distinct details.
You can use this method to make cuts and battle damage on armor, which is one of the most common uses for it. You can also use it to make lines and details in the foam, like I did for my Foolish cosplay. For this build, I first sketched on the details I wanted, then used a craft knife to cut part way through the foam, making all the lines and details. Then all I had to do was heat up the foam using a heat gun, and all the cuts and details opened up. This method is a great way to quickly add some cool details!
Easy Raised Details
This second method is a way to add raised details. To get these, you can use puffy paint or hot glue! 3D puffy paint (also called dimensional fabric paint) is typically used for fabric, but it works great on EVA foam as well! You can use it to draw on all sorts of swirly or rounded details.
Hot glue works great for this as well; you can use trails of hot glue to make swirling details or lines, or even rounded rivets. Hot glue can be a bit trickier to work with than puffy paint, but it works great in a pinch, and I’ve used it for a lot of different cosplays. It’s helpful if you need something done really quickly, since hot glue cools in a few seconds, while 3D paint needs several hours.
One foam piece I used puffy paint was my Loki dagger. It started out as a plain foam knife, but using 3D puffy paint to add details along the hilt really brought it to the next level!
Layering EVA Foam
Another way of adding detail to your foam builds is by using more than one layer of foam. You start out, with most cosplay pieces, with a single layer of foam. But it doesn’t have to stay that way! You can cut out and glue on lots of different foam details. It can be foam of the same thickness, Dremeled into shape, or layers of thinner foam, such as 2mm. Even just adding a few layers of foam can easily take a foam piece from boring to interesting!
A good example of layering foam is my Wonder Woman cosplay. The base build was just a single layer of 4mm EVA foam, glued together to make a corset, but that was pretty boring just on its own! To make it more interesting, I cut out a bunch of long, thin pieces of foam, and attached them to the base layer using contact cement. To take it even further, I cut out the bird-shaped pieces at the top, and glued those on as well. Lots of layers of details, to help make the cosplay more interesting!
Dremeling
I mentioned it earlier, but a Dremel is a great tool for adding details to EVA foam! There are a ton of different sanding tips you can get for this rotary sanding tool, and you can do a ton of cool stuff with it! You can smooth and shape the foam with a softer sanding tip, or use the edge of a tool to add cuts and battle damage to the foam. The options are limitless!
For this piece of silver armor, I built a base out of a thicker foam, and then used that same thickness of foam to cut out more pieces, and Dremel them into shape, making some fancy raised details, which I attached with contact cement. Sanding foam can a bit messy and time-consuming, so I don’t do it as often as some of these other methods, but you can get some really cool results with it!
Heating & Pressing Foam
For the last method, I want to talk about a detailing method that maybe isn’t used as much in cosplay. If you heat up foam, and then hold it in a certain shape, it’ll stay in that shape when it cools down. Thus, if you heat the foam up, and press a textured object into its surface until it cools, it’ll hold that same texture in it. By using this method, you can get a ton of super interesting, intricate details!
One of the most popular ways to use this strategy is to make fake leather. Just heat up your foam, and press crumpled aluminum foil into it. And voila! Super easy fake leather.
But beyond that, the options are pretty limitless! By getting creative with it, and experimenting with even just random objects around your house, you can get some awesome textures! Just heat up the foam, and press random things into it until the foam cools. You may be surprised by what you find!
One way I used this method was for my Scarlet Witch cosplay. A lot of the foam pieces on the corset needed a cool, lined texture, and to get it, I cut out a piece of wicker basket, then heated up the foam, and pressed the wicker into it. This got me a super cool texture, that I was easily able to use on the rest of the corset!
The Possibilities Are Endless!
There are a ton of different ways to add details to EVA foam, and in this blog post, I’ve just covered a few! By experimenting with these, and just trying new things, you can find a ton of cool ways to make your foam builds more detailed.
Hopefully, this gave you a good starting point in learning how to detail EVA foam. Go and experiment; have fun with it! You may find some really cool techniques, all to help bring your foam builds to the next level.