Making Ahsoka Tano's Lekku Headpiece

 

Photo by benderlens

I started an Ahsoka cosplay back in March of 2021. I knew I wanted to make the headpiece, but I had no idea how to even attempt something like that. I had made a few cosplays before Ahsoka, but this seemed very complicated to me. Fortunately, lots of Ahsoka cosplayers out there in the galaxy have shared tons of resources, patterns, and tutorials that I was able to reference. One resource in particular that I found super helpful was the Team Tano Facebook group, which is all about cosplaying Ahsoka! I took a dive into that group and looked up other cosplayers on Instagram and YouTube to find as many ideas as I could.

Making The Base Headpiece

I ended up settling on purchasing a base pattern from CommanderPoptartShop over on Etsy which was super helpful and had great instructions to guide me through the process. I think the specific version I purchased is no longer available due to some updates from the creator, but that shop has several different versions of Ahsoka lekku available since Ahsoka's lekku change. This pattern was also really nice because it gave a list of the specific materials that would be needed! This pattern called for upholstery foam as the base, which I was able to find at my local Joann Fabrics. 

I printed out my pattern pieces, traced them onto the foam, and got yo cutting. I can't remember how the pattern suggested to attach the pieces, but I hand stitched mine together with a heavy duty nylon thread I had around the house. Glue would have probably worked as well (and might be what the pattern recommended) but I did not have a ton of different supplies on hand at this point in my cosplay journey so I used what I had!

 

I was so excited at this point because it was already coming together perfectly! After I got the upholstery foam base constructed, I used a stretchy spandex fabric to create a "glove" for the lekku. To do this, I just had to cut out the same pattern pieces on the fabric, sew it together, and stretch it over the foam base.

I was not really sure how to connect the spandex to the foam at the front, so I chose to pull the fabric tight, fold it over the foam, and stitch it in place. I don't know that I would recommend this method though because my lekku ended up having a big crease along the front where my spandex was pulling tight on the foam edge. It created sort of a wrinkle where it was trying to turn back to the outside (see the next photo). I'm sure there was a better way, but baby cosplayer me just did the first thing I could think of! 

The reason the lekku needs the fabric cover over the upholstery foam is because it was going to be painted with liquid latex to give it a rubbery finish. If the liquid latex was painted directly on the upholstery foam, a lot of it would soak in and it would take so much more latex to build up enough to get the desired texture. 

I purchased some liquid latex from Amazon. I'm pretty sure this is the one I used, but I just randomly selected something after doing a little bit of searching. Some quick tips of the things I learned through this process and in my research:

1. Paint the latex in thin layers, letting each one completely dry before starting the next. You have to do several layers to build up enough latex to form a nice thick rubbery exterior, but you have to make sure the latex is good and dry between each coat. If you try to go back in with another layer before the first layer dries, your new layer could pull up some of the old layer and cause a less smooth finish.
2. Clean out your brush between layers and have several brushes on hand. The latex starts to build up and get gummy on your brush. When this happens, the latex on the brush will make your future layers not as smooth and clean. You will want to rinse your brush out between layers, but you might still have to go through a few brushes if they get too gummed up. I had a pack of the sponge brushes on hand and went through a few. 
3. DO NOT LET THE HEADPIECE TOUCH ITSELF! The latex is very sticky even after drying. If one part of the lekku bumps another part of the lekku, they will stick together. Pulling it apart may cause the latex layer to tear or may create little latex bumps, which will make the final product less smooth. I think I did have this happen some, but was able to get the pieces apart without too much damage.

I cannot remember how many layers I painted on. I know it was a lot. I would say at least 4-5 layers, but I was just going until it felt right to me. I had never done this before, so I was going purely on what felt right 😂. Also, I added a little more latex to the seam areas to try and hide them as much as possible. They were still a bit visible on my finished headpiece, but were much less noticeable than before the latex was added.

You can see how much darker the lekku looked after several layers had dried. In the last picture above, you can also see the brighter white color where I had added more latex just on the seam areas to build it up more. 

Once I felt like I had enough layers of latex, I moved on with painting. I decided to paint my headpiece by mixing some white acrylic paint in with some latex. Doing this helped the paint stay flexible so it would not crack. I basically just tinted the latex with the paint and painted on a white tinted latex layer (or a few) of until it had good even coverage. I did the same thing for the blue and used some reference photos to freehand the pattern.

Once I was completely done with the paint and everything was good and dry, something had to be done to make the latex not sticky anymore. I had read about using baby powder or something similar for this. My mom happened to have an old bottle in the house so I used this and a fluffy makeup brush to dust powder all over the headpiece until it was no longer tacky. This did lighten the blue a little bit, so that is something to keep in mind when mixing the right amount of blue paint into the latex.

You can see the difference here before and after adding the powder. The look of the powder will also wear off some over time.

Fit test with my headpiece!

And that is it! That is how I constructed my base headpiece for my Ahsoka cosplay! 

... But wait! There's more.

 If you want to keep reading, I will also walk through the accessories I made for the headpiece as well as some modifications I made to the base headpiece to make it sit better on my head. 

Accessories and Headpiece Upgrades

Akul Teeth Take 1

I was making an Ahsoka season 3-5 version from The Clone Wars series, so I had to make her akul teeth headdress, her beads, and padawan braid. I did go back and remake the teeth down the road, so I will show both methods I used.

 

For my first try with the akul teeth, I decided to try and make them out of foam clay and use my rotary tool to carve them down to shape. I formed them with foam clay against the headpiece and the material adhered to the headpiece decently on its own without needing any glue. This project was my first time using the foam clay and I don't know why but foam clay is something I have never quite figured out how to work with properly. I just cannot get this stuff to work right! But I am also super impatient so that was part of my problem on this project. Since I sculpted the teeth out of only foam clay, it was thick in some places and was going to take a really long time to dry all the way through. Being the way I am, I went ahead and started sanding away at it anyway. It got messy quickly since only the outer layer had dried. I ended up having to stop the sanding and decided to cut down the base teeth with some scissors quite a bit to get them closer to the shape I needed while decreasing the material that would need to dry. After forcing myself to let the teeth have proper dry time, I went back to sanding with the rotary tool to refine the shape of the teeth. Once I finally got them shaped like I wanted, I painted them silver and called it a day. 

**I will share my remake of the akul teeth later in the post**

Beads and Padawan Braid

The last accessory that the headpiece needed was beads! Ahsoka has a strand of beads that start at the back of the largest center akul tooth and go down in the shape of a Y towards the back of her head. I could not find any beads that matched hers quite right, so I just opted for two different sized round silver beads. I placed them on fishing line in a pattern that I felt looked similar to the reference. Where the beads attach to the top of the headdress, I used a needle and thread and made some small stitches (through the whole headpiece) to tack the bead strands in place. I made a padawan braid with more silver beads and one yellow bead at the end. 

Akul Teeth Take 2

I wore the first version of my headdress with the above akul teeth method for Halloween, but down the road when I wanted to wear Ahsoka to a con I decided I wanted to remake the teeth since I was not satisfied with how they looked. Luckily the foam clay pealed off the headpiece pretty easily. For my remake, I opted to 3D print akul teeth. I purchased a file from 3Demon to use and it worked out great! 

I learned a neat trick regarding working with PLA printed material, but I cannot remember where it was that I learned this trick. Anyway, here is the trick! Since the PLA is heated up and melted to be used in the printer, adding heat back to the finished print might allow you to shape it more. Let me explain a bit more...

I don't know anything about 3D modeling, and I realized that when I printed my teeth that they were flat on the back. Since my headpiece is curved, I wanted the back of my teeth to have a curve to them so they lay nice along the edge of the headpiece. What I did to solve this was heat up some water in a pot on the stove. I took a pair of tongs and dunked in the akul teeth one at a time (briefly!). Doing this softened the PLA and made the finished print a little more pliable. I was able to use my hands and press the akul teeth against my headpiece to form the backs of the teeth into the exact curve needed to lay flush on the headpiece. Be careful when doing this though. If you press to hard or try to bend the PLA too much it might break or become too misshapen (ex: you could get a dent from where your fingers are pressing into the printed piece). Just use extra caution and go slow when using this trick. I heated each tooth in tiny amounts as I was going to make them just pliable enough to slightly curve the outer layer.

Then I painted the teeth with a mix of silver and black paint to create more of a pewter color.  I attached them to my headpiece with E6000 and so far I have not had any issues with the teeth falling off.

Before I glued on the teeth, I decided to try and make some small changes to the headpiece. I knew the teeth were going to cover most of the weird wrinkle I had in the front, but I decided to add some Kwik Seal into the low spots to build it up and make it more flush. This was a material I already had on hand so I'm sure there was a better option, but it worked for me!

My other issues was the way the headpiece laid against my head. The front edge of the headpiece just seemed too thick which made the headpiece look a little weird to me where it met my head. On impulse, I decided to take a set of flush cutters (again, just the closest thing I had on hand 😂) and trimmed away at the excess bulk along the front. I was able to trim enough of the headpiece away that it sat much more flat on my head. 

This first image shows a before and after of the old and new akul teeth. The "after" image also already has the Kwik Seal added to the gap and the edge thickness trimmed away.

This image shows the subtle difference trimming away at the front edge of the headpiece made to how chunky it looked in the front. 

One other thing I ended up doing to the headpiece was tearing out some of the upholstery foam from the inside. Since the fabric layer is on the outside of the upholstery foam and was made stiff by the liquid latex, the headpiece was able to hold some shape on its own without the foam inside. I did leave the foam in some of the the more structured places like in the montrals (top horns) and in the three lekky "tentacles". I felt like removing some of the foam gave my head a bit more room and helped the headpiece lay a little flatter where the foam was removed along the front edge.

 
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with how well this headpiece turned out considering this was the first time I had worked wit a lot of these materials. I would like to remake the headpiece sometime down the road. One down side to this headpiece is that there is not much "wiggle" room. When I wear the headpiece. It is a bit stiff. The lekku are flexible enough that they can bend, but the longer bits do not bounce/move around any when I am wearing it. I have been researching and have some ideas for other methods to try sometime.

Photo by madcapmags

Photo by Benderlens

 Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about this headpiece! I definitely recommend checking out the resources in the Team Tano facebook group for lots of awesome tips and resources. 

Happy cosplaying!

-JediVariant