Friday, January 15, 2021

Hard Foam Koozie Upcycle

Hey all, 

My sister asked me to purchase some koozies so we could customize them and give them away at the Local blood drive she organizes. Welp little to say it was a flop vinyl that did not stick and paint that scratched off, hate to say it but we moved forward with shirts and placed the koozies in storage. 





Fast forward to cleaning out storage and I stumbled upon those koozies and wondered if I could update them to be able to be used at a Renaissance fair. IT was a long path but this is what I cam up with 


Pretty Cool right 
The supplies you need are: 
A can of Flex All Sealent
A wood burner
A sheet of Craft Foam
Contact Cement
Cosplay foam Paint
Air Brush (if you have)

The first thing I did was burn the design into the koozie. As you can see I worked on mermaid and dragon scales and wood planks. WARNING: please be sure to complete this part outside in a well-ventlilated area while wearing your PPE as the smoke is pretty fierce and you house will smell for days. 

I then sprayed each wood plank koozie with flex all and each mermaid with clear foam primer (also in the cosplay area)and hung to dry
Once dry take your cosplay foam paint and decorate the koozie. I found that an airbrush was great for this as it kept the layers of paint very thin and allowed for easy shadowing.


For the koozies below I did not coat with Flex All prior to painting but in the end, I did not like the smooth finish they ended up with. 
I then cut narrow strips of craft foam and hole punched some small circles and painted them silver. I attached them with contact cement to the wood plank koozies to look like metal.
Don't Mind the TV playing in the background of the videos it was a late-night



As you can see I only used colors I wanted to come through for the dragon and mermaid scales koozies so I did not have to completely cover I just added accent color shift paint.