Progress on the Upcycled Helmet

For my upcycle project I am taking inspiration a leather helmet I found last December at an art market. The aesthetic is “Medieval Fantasy” along the lines of Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, or the countless other properties that incorporate knights and swords and dragons and the like. I will be using cardboard and zipties as my materials in place of leather and rivets. These materials will give the total aesthetic one of cheapness. Everyone knows cardboard is cheap/free, so regardless of the craftsmanship, the final product will look inexpensive and probably a bit silly, but will still look pretty cool and be well received by people who see it.

To start I gathered my materials. Fortunately my mom saves lots of Amazon boxes, so I started by digging through her collection and finding an assortment of medium sized cardboard boxes that all had the same thickness to them. Then I also borrowed her cutting board, and sewing measuring tape. I also gathered together my reference image to work from, a notebook, a pencil, a box cutter, and a snickers (for snacks).

I quickly got lost in my work, and forgot to take progress photos from here on out. But I started by measuring my head, and then drawing out the different individual cuts of cardboard with lengths according to my measurements. I started with the face shield, and then the sides. I then cut 3 of the same top pieces, because I assumed they would all be the same thing, just shingled behind each other. Boy was I wrong.

It turns out (at least with cardboard) you need to make every head piece slightly different. Each one slightly shorter, and wider than the one before it. This made me adopt a new strategy of just cutting pieces out and attaching them together as I went. I started by attaching the most forefront piece the the sides, and then basically just eyeballing how big each consecutive piece needed to be, guessing and checking as I went.

And by the time I had the entire side and top of the helmet done, I went to attach my previously cut face shield, only to find that it was now too small, causing me to have to cut another one.

I also experimented with making a hinge system that would allow the face shield to raise up, which I succeeded in doing, but this same mechanism also caused it to droop when it was down, looking really dopey and silly. So I decided to remove it and just attach it in a fixed position.

When it was finally done, I thought about painting it with a dark red spraypaint I have. But upon recalling anything I have every spraypainted, and remembering how even 10 years later it still smells like spraypaint. I decided against it.