Edward Scissorhands Gloves

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For Halloween 2012 I decided to revamp my Edward Scissorhands costume for the fourth time. In addition to an upgrade to a more accurate wig and boots, I decided it was time to ditch the store-bought gloves and create a near-screen accurate pair to complete the look. Time was limited due to the date being less than a month away but I was planning to wear them around all night so they had to be durable enough to hold up and still enable me to preform ordinary tasks, but also not break the bank. With 5 slabs of basswood, 3 sheets of craft foam, a ton of hot glue and some added creativity, these resulted. I'm sad to say they didn't quite survive the whole night but they look the part and are going to be the base for an even better pair eventually, made of leather and finished smooth with proper metallic paint.

I started by building a 3d model of the scissors parts in CAD and xporting them to a papercraft program where I printed out the patterns that I could use to shape the slabs of basswood. Gluing the parts by the edge neatly with hot glue proved to be more difficult than I expected due to quick drying times but the result was effective and tame-saving.

The pieces were fitted to my fingers with extra room for the fingers of leather gloves. The idea was for each scissors blade to fit up to my first knuckle on each finger so they would all bend at approximately the same place.

One of the more challenging feats, aside from finding decent reference material (thank you Hot Toys 18" figure), was obtaining proper handles without molding them myself or settling for more two-dimensional pieces like the store bought props. traditional scissors aren't exactly designed to allow one to easily dismantle them so I went to work with a hacksaw, strategically cutting into the plastic from multiple angles until I could pull the metal blades out and sand down the plastic handles flat to glue each one it it's place. Other handle parts were crafted from the wood and foam, but most were created using this technique.

Using the same CAD-to-papercraft pattern technique, I created the gloves from craft foam and sealed them in a Modge Podge and water mixture. I used the same sealing technique for the blades to smooth them out and add durability.

After 5 or so coats and drying, I spray painted the gloves black and let them sit for 24 hours. Next up, I had a Perfetto crackle mixture that I applied in two parts, very finely, to achieve a gritty, worn leather texture. I used this technique on all parts of the gauntlets.

I then fashioned over-sized copper paperclips into buckles for the gloves. The rounded ends were already perfectly shaped for the main buckle section, and the straight-aways were clipped down for the prongs, then all glued together with the craft finished foam.

Another challenge was finding or molding proper bone hinges. They were such a unique feature of the prop, I didn't want to use any ordinary piece of hardware. In the end, cheap bone Halloween party favors were the key. They had holes in them that needed to be filled with hot glue and sanded down, and then I took two-link lengths of ball chains and inserted each of the two into the ends of adjoined bones. Some shaving was also required to get the proper shape for the ends of the bone hinges.

Here is the first test fit for the entire gloves assembly. The underside of each glove was designed with a split down the middle where an inset overlap would be attached with Velcro. This ensured a proper fit, a virtually seamless undersize and, most importantly, the ability to put them on and take them off myself.