Astrid's Ax; the final addition to my cosplay

I can't believe this is going to be my last post on making my Astrid cosplay.  I just finished making the ax and  I am now officially done with my cosplay.  

The ax was the one piece of Astrid's outfit that kinda scared me (that and the hood).  How does someone make an ax out of ordinary craft supplies.  I found quite a few helpful tutorials.  Here's links to my favorites.

http://www.therpf.com/f24/astrid-how-train-your-dragon-2-my-little-girl-updated-10-13-14-a-225211/

http://www.instructables.com/id/Cosplay-Axe-Astrid-Httyd-2/?ALLSTEPS

http://liv-is-alive.blogspot.com/2014/06/astrid-how-to-train-your-dragon-2.html

And here's what I ended up doing;

 First I stained my wooden pole with wood stain.  It was really sticky and smelled but the effect is worth it.

Then I had to figure out how to make the ax.  I did a lot of measuring until I was happy with the shape.  I initially made it way to big and had to cut it smaller.  My finished ax is actually huge but hey, like I've said before, the bigger the better.

I knew that I wanted to make the ax with foam but I could not find any really thick foam at our local craft store and I didn't want to have to buy it online.  My family love's to shop at thrift stores so I thought why not just see if the thrift store has any of the thick foam. I lucked out.  I could not believe it.  For under five bucks I got more than enough of the thick foam to make my ax.

I made my ax two thickness's. 

I sandwiched the cardboard in between the foam pieces to add extra strength

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I was at a loss of how to make the edges angled.  I ended up using a razor blade and carefully cutting along the edge at an angle.

Using craft foam I added the... (I don't know what you call it) metal piece thingy.  

By now I believe I'm an expert and painting things to look like metal.  I actually really enjoy this kind of painting. I used a lighter silver to paint the edges. 

I could not find leather strips in blue and red that were also the thickness I wanted so I ended up cutting up a belt.  I was lucky enough to find a red belt  but I could not find a blue one so I painted a brown belt blue. You'd never guess that I used  a cut up belt to make the leather strips.  

For the skulls on the end of Astrid's ax I really didn't want to make any more and I had two leftover from the skirt so I just used those.  Sorry for the quality of these pictures I took them with my ipod.

Yesterday  I received my wig.  I was almost kinda disappointed with it because It would not look natural on me.  It was mainly my dark eyebrows that made it look so funny.  But after my costume is on the wig actually looked perfect.  I'm really happy with it.  I really enjoyed styling it.

So with the ax done I have come the end of my cosplaying adventure (hopefully it's only the first of many more).  My cosplay is finally done and I just have to say, I LOVE IT!!!

Today was the coolest day before the weather gets really hot again so I put everything on and went outside to get some pictures.  To see the best of the pictures I created a page for my cosplay.  You can find it at: http://uniquelyhis4ever.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_24.html