Pearl's Gem From Stephen Universe
Light Up Version

I recently did a Pearl from Steven Universe cosplay. I thought it was neat how the pearl on her forehead light up.  I scaled her up to my height,  her head gem ended up being 3.564 inches high.  I had trouble figuring out the width of the gem.  I did a little graphic design of various ovals,  I picked the one I liked.  I printed it out. I used a glue stick to adhere the pattern to foam.  I then carved it into a nice oval shape.   I then coated the foam with  3 layers of wood glue,  and one layer of epoxy. That might have been overkill be I didn't have any chemical reacting. I then coated it with a layer of Vaseline.

|Then the fun part came. I used some generic instamorph to cover the foam.  I tried to get it really smooth.

If you have never worked with instamorph.  It is basically the active ingredient in Worbla.  It is little white pellets that you heat up,  and you can mold into whatever you want.  I boiled some water,  dropped in the opaque white pellets.  When they turn clear,  you are ready for fun.  So  molded it around me foam oval.  I also got it stuck to my coffee table.  Drat. If you do this maybe use some wax paper or something.

Now to make it glow.

I wired 5 surface mount LED's on some strip board I had.  I origonally planned for 3,  but I added 5, that is why the wires are all crazy.  Anyway. I hot glued that into the instamorph pearl.  I made a back plae from some worbla that I shaped to my head. I painted the inside of the worbla metallic silver to help push more light out.  I used gorilla super glue to glue the back plate to the front assembly.  And finished it of with a 1 to 1 mixture of mod podge and pearlescent water color additive.

I then used liquid latex to attatch the entire thing to my head.

And it worked. I used a cr2054 battery.  A very big battery. But it ran the entire time I needed.  When I got home from the convention,  I took the head piece off. I forgot to take the battery out. The lights are still running,  1 week later.