Tutorial - How to make foam look like leather! (Patreon)

Hey guys! So for my RE4 Leon cosplay I had to make a pocket knife leather casing that latches onto Leons gun harness! Here is process on how I did that part with foam to look like the other leather pieces!

First get some craft foam! I used a tan kind, so that just in case the paint chipped away the tan part would show through.

I then went and began painting! I painted a base of dark brown and lightly brushed on some lighter browns and tans to give it more dimension!

Next we need to get the texture of leather! Leather is very veiny and has a distinct texture to it, to mimic it I took some aluminum foil and crunched it up. I then heated up my foam piece and placed the foil VERY firmly down atop the warm foam, I prefer to do this after painting because it keeps the texture better! If you prefer you can do it before and if you do not have a heat gun you can also use an iron on a low heat setting, just place the iron atop the tin foil and the foil atop the foam and work your way through it!

And here is how it looks with the texture added in!

To get it looking even more realistic I did a loose stitch around the border of the top foam piece, you'll be surprised at how well thicker foams are able to hold stitching from a machine and with light tan paint I painted on where the leather stitching would naturally go for a piece like this!

The eyelets I made from googly eyes I painted silver and everything was adhered together with HDX Super glue that you can get from Home Depot!

The leather straps wrapped around the knife casing are leftover belt pieces from my Riku cosplay and the knife was a toy one I got from walmart!

If you want to get a more wet look to your foam (leather piece) you can seal the paint with a high gloss spray but I wanted mine to look worn/used so I just used a normal matte spray for mine!

This was a quicker/shorter tutorial but I hope it helps at all!