A few months back I managed to score tickets to the screening of Dark Phoenix with the awesome people at Comic Con Africa. I wasn’t going to dress up but- I do enjoy the last-minute scramble and decided to make a pair of Wolverine Claws as a fun craft. What was awesome about this project is that I made do with what I had around the house and ended up with something cool in the end.
First thing I needed was a stencil, and my good friend Pinterest does not disappoint. All I did was search ‘wolverine claws’ and printed the outline on a A4 sheet of paper. I then cut this out and traced it on cardboard.
I used a regular cardboard box I had laying around in my garage – this was remanence of the move I did earlier this year. After tracing my pattern onto the cardboard I used scissors and a box cutter to cut the blade pieces out. But I wasn’t satisfied with the build, I found the cardboard a little too flimsy. So I went scouring the house once again to look for some better material.
I found an old drawing pad that had pretty sturdy cardboard at the back so I decided to give this a try. I repeated the process of tracing and cutting, but the cutting part was a pain! Craft scissors and a box cutter are probably not the tools for this but after a lot of suffering, I managed to gather 6 freshly cut pieces for my claws. To refine my work I used a high grit nail file to file down the edges and make them smoother, sandpaper can also be used but I fond this was an easier tool.
According to my pattern, the claws had two holes at the base to accommodate a handle. In order to make the holes in the cardboard, I chose to use a soldering iron that burnt the perfect sized holes into the claws. This can also be done by poking a hole with a knife and using a skewer to make it bigger.
The next step was to paint the claws, first with a base coat- I used basic acrylic paint in black for the base and topped that off with a coat of silver acrylic paint. I did not see the need to prep the cardboard I chose to use, as it wasn’t too absorbent but you can use a coat of gesso to prep most items you want to paint on. I also did not seal the claws in either but a varnish can work if you want to seal the paint job in. I let that dry overnight before getting back to work on it the next day.
In order to make the handles I used two bamboo skewers, that I broke in half to make four pieces. I trimmed the edges as best I could with a scissor and filed the uneven edge. I then used the soldering iron once again to burn the edges so that no one gets a splinter. I then assembled my claws by sliding one claw in at a time onto two skewer pieces. After they were put together I used hot glue to hold everything in place and painted the handles black.
I absolutely loved this little art project! Player 2 got to wear them and the claws received many compliments and I am going to be making more pairs for friends but I will be upping my game and will be using some sturdier materials in the future.
For myself, however, I decided to do a Storm inspired makeup look:
Thank you for checking this post out. I hope you liked it, let me know what your thoughts and if you would try this out for yourself?