Hey Everyone!

I originally posted this tutorial on tumblr over at the goggles tutorial ; but hopefully someone here can uses this for a Hanji, Rico or Goggles-kun cosplay!

Starting with supplies:

 

Gesso, Krylon Premium Chrome paint, Liquitex meidum gloss varnish, Worbla, 2 different grades of sandpaper (80 & 400), brown pleather, thick thread used for sewing jeans, two different paint brushes- a thin one and a wide brush, xacto knife, scissors, a fine tip sharpie (since pencil is really hard to see on worbla) and a hello kitty ruler! I didn’t put it in the picture, but I also used a 1/2 inch buckle for the straps and a heat gun for the worbla. (Although I’ve been told a blow dryer works as well)

Measuring for the frames was tricky. I already had prescription lenses that I wanted to use, so depending on the person making these, your measurements can vary. Theoretically, you can make them even without lenses! Before cutting into the worbla, I made a “pattern” with a piece of paper. My first cut was a 3in x 4in box:

 

After that, I found the exact middle of the box by folding it diagonally and traced the shape of my lens onto the paper: ( >_<; sorry, my dot is a little off, lol)

 

After I had that, I folded each side of the paper into the center (think like origami), so I could see what part of the paper I needed to cut out:

 

Then snip, snip, snip! I cut the corners out and then cut out the lens viewing area- but I only cut a little bit before the line since you don’t want the lens to fall out of the frame.

 

Then we end up with this fun looking object! this is the shape you’ll want to cut out with your worbla. The box may seem really big, but you’ll fold the edges in on them self to create a rim to help hold the lenses in place. 

 

Painting & Shaping:

Eventually, your box will shape into this. This is where the hard part comes in. You have your worbla shape. Now you just heat, mold, heat… and mold. There may be areas there you want to reinforce with extra strips of worbla, which works really well too! Worbla is wonderful to work with in that it molds so easily easily together with little to no effort. This is going to be the longest and most frustrating part of the project since there’s no right or wrong way to do it, it’s all about getting the shape that works with your face and that you’re happy with.

Once you have a shape that you’re happy with, apply a coat of gesso. Once the gesso dries, sand it with the rougher sand paper then apply another coat of gesso. Once that coat of gesso dries, sand with the lighter grade sandpaper and apply another coat of gesso. I recommend at least 3 coats of gesso when working with worbla, it gives you a much smoother finish when you paint. For this project, I ended up doing this process four times (that’s 12 coats of gesso and a lot of sanding) and ended up with this finish:

 

All about the Straps:

After you gesso, sand, paint and varnish your frames, you’ll want to use your xacto knife to cut some holes for your straps. You’ll want to cut two holes in each frame, one for the nose strap and one for the “around the head” strap. My straps for the pleather straps are a 1/2 inch wide and the elastic straps are an inch wide. The pleather ones look nicer, but if you’re working on a budget or don’t have the means to work with pleather, elastic is a good alternative:

 

^Using Elastic with some pleather (but you could use entirely elastic, too)

 

^using all pleather with buckle instead of elastic.

Note about sewing the pleather straps: I cut 1in pieces of fabric, folded the sides in and just sewed them down to create the look you see in the photo.

To attach the top and bottom straps, I pinned the goggles to the headform to get an idea of where I wanted the straps to go. The smaller straps are about 8in long, where the longest one is about 13in. (of course, everyone’s head isn’t the same, so that may differ; and using a buckle made my goggles adjustable!). The mini-straps were placed 5in. away from the frames on the main strap and hand sewn at an angle to stay pointed upward/downward.

How to attach the straps to the googles:

 

For this, I used an extra piece of worbla, 2in long x 1/2in wide, sandwiched the pleather between it and used grommets to secure it in place. This was my second pair of goggles, for the first, I used elastic.

I’d say all in all, it took about 40 hours to make the second pair of goggles. Most of it was sanding, gessoing, molding the worbla and painting. If you get stuck or have any questions, let me know! Good luck fellow crafters <3!