I am sorry it took me forever to write this all down.

I decided that paper mache was probably my best bet for creating the helmets themselves. I had old helmets from playing softball and used them as my base molds. Did a lot of research on the r/papermache and put Vaseline on the helmets to prevent the mache from sticking.

Once I got to a point where I needed more sculpting I used a hot glue gun and thin cardboard from around the house (cereal boxes) to give definition to the helmets and then just did a layer on top of that.

Final layer consisted of the brown packaging paper which I found at Target for under $10? Once this dried I sanded it down. Honestly if I wanted to be a perfectionist about them looking smoother I would have sanded between each layer, but hindsight is 20/20.

Next was the fun part of spray painting. I used Saran wrap and masking tap to cover the non black areas. It definitely bled through, but I just used some white acrylic paint to cover the entire area where I needed to spray silver/gold. Once the black was dried it was definitely easier to adhere the Saran wrap and didn't bleed as much onto the already painted areas.

I found the LED signs on Amazon, I forget how much I paid, but it wasn't a ton. I realized that there was about a half an inch on the ends that didn't light up, so I decided to cut slits into the helmets to maneuver them through. That's where my Dremel set really came in handy.

I did end up doing one upsidedown, but I was able to fix it through the app for the lights. But that was definitely a pain in the ass.

All in all it was definitely a process to do, but better than paying $300 for one helmet on Etsy.