Shiro's Crown Tutorial (No Game No Life)

Sup! Rintare in da building. So, I said I was going to share the process behind my Shiro crown that I made for Katsucon 2015 and here it is! I really wanted my Shiro to resemble the figure more so than the anime, so I pulled my references for the crown from the figure.I guess I'll try to make this as tutorial-y as I can. Sorry in advance for lack of pictures as I didn't capture every single step of this!

Stuff I used:

• Craft foam (I just used a few yellow sheets from Michaels, but I painted over them anyway so it doesn't really matter!)
• Xacto knife or something to cut with precision
• Spray paint + primer
• Wire (I'm not too sure about the specifics of the wire, but it is slightly thicker than a wire clothes hanger?)
• Gems!!
• Craft adhesive of your choice (I used a hot glue gun)
• Aligator clips for putting the crown in your hair!

 So first I made a paper mock-up after Kuritare did some dimensional analysis on the figure to match the size to me. Despite all the number crunching, I still needed some adjustments because well...I'm not an anime figure and I'm much taller than Shiro. I made...a lot of paper mock-ups before I was satisfied with all the angles. The structure is strange because the crown is not a complete circle. Shiro and Sora apparently break a crown in half,  but this crown is really far from being a half circle. It appears to be about 7/8th of a circle, just enough room for a ponytail to fit through.
After tracing the mock-up onto the foam, I drew the mock-up again with the decorative ridges (? I guess I'll call it that).

The crown is made up of 7 pieces.
I laid my mock-up on top of the foam to trace!

The decorative piece was cut out separately from the 7 crown parts.
It was one continuous and very narrow piece of foam,
so the tips of the crown where VERY fragile.

So, in total I had 9 pieces of foam: the 7 pieces, the long, skinny, and fragile decorative piece which also helps to hide the separation between the 7 main pieces, and a backing piece which I used to glue the main 7 pieces onto (so they have something to align to) which is not pictured, but you'll see it later.

Here's a tiny mock foam crown I made to test.
I'm like a fairy god parent!

Next, I painted all my pieces! First, I went over each piece with spray paint primer (it's white). I think this also helped fill in the porous foam as well to make the crown look smoother. Primer and two coats of gold did the trick.

A quick paint test on a foam strip. This is two coats after primer! 

Liquid gold *v* Also this is the paint I used! Shiny gold cap!

Here is everything all painted and laid out!
Ready for assembly!

 Now I just glued and glued and glued! Below you'll find the picture of a main crown piece as I glue it to the backing piece. I decided to use two pieces of wire because I didn't want the crown pieces to be teetering on one piece of wire. So, I glued the wire to the backing and then glued the pieces on. Finally, I glued the decorative piece on. I then CAREFULLY bent the whole crown into the right shape. It was very scary.

A glimpse of the backing piece and the wires.

PHEW!!

The ponytail clip for the wig fit perfectly in the gap.

 Great! Next, I had to pick out the right gems for the job! Luckily, my big bag of gems from Michaels had all the large gems I needed and Lili gave me some small oval gems as well. Because I used premade gems, I obviously wasn't going to be accurate, but I think they did the job just fine. Making your own gems can be expensive and time consuming!

BAG-O-GEMS (spilled out on my desk)

Tada! all gems glued on.

Here's a sample of how I attached alligator clips.
I used 2 for the finished crown.

Our friend Shifty Cosplay also asked me to make him a Sora crown. The process was similar except I just made it one huge piece of foam. There's a back piece and wire as well.

The gems were pretty off for this, but..eh.

Crown debut in our Katsu hotel room!

A hall shot of  Shifty Cosplay and I. 

Thanks for reading! I hope you found this at least somewhat helpful! I would be happy to answer any questions about it too. (= 3=)

pce