Runestaff of Nordrassil

For the Frostfire Regalia costume I build for koogco.no I also made a staff and decided on the Runestaff of Nordrassil. 

This is a walkthrough of how I made the staff, see here for tutorial on the rest of the costume. 

As usual I started with a cardboard tube. 

Since i knew I would have to hide a battery and still be able to change it, I made a way to unscrew the bottom of the staff. This I did by adding a bottle to the end, and attaching the endpiece to the cork. 

The endpiece is quite larger than the cork so I build up using the rest of my bottle and padding it with foam. 

After the volume is created I start with tin foil and clay to build up the shape of the ornamented endpiece. 

All shaped out, ready for sanding. 

Since this piece would be the resting point of the staff (eg. touching the floor and holdeing the weight) I covered it with worbla to make it more durable. 

Lights!

With the bottle mechanism in plase I can now start addind lights. 

The staff will have three small gems sticking out in the middle, a glowing orb and a orange gem on the top. Here are the placements of the lights befor adding the bling. 

The three smaller gems are just made from hotglue packed around the LED. This will diffuse the light. You can also use polymorph or a resin gem, but this was a fast and easy way to get them in place. 

The glowing orb is made from an acrylic sphere which I sanded down to diffuse the lights inside. I used a dremel to cut out holes so it will fit to the staff base. 

Light test without paint. 

To get the color and pattern I painted the orb on the inside with acrylic paint and used a marker for the symbols. 

More light tests in dark and light room. 

The last gem was made from a resin cast. I used a two part silicon putty to make mold of a generic diamond shape. Then I used Crystal clear resin to cast a flat gem shape. 

Staff skeleton. 

With foam I build up the basic shape of the staff. 

Tin foil and clay was used to make some of the more defined parts. These were sanded down and covered in worbla. 

When the body of the staff was ready every detail were covered with worbla. This makes it much easier to add more worbla details later (as worbla glues to itself very well). And make the staff itself more sturdy. 

Here I have base painted the staff in a brown base color using acrylic paint. 

With a vintage gold paint and a sponge I slowly add details to the top. The gem is painted red with glass paint from the back side. 

And with blue, grey and silver paint I added the rest of the details. 

The stem of the staff has a wood texture. This is created with glue from a hot glue gun. Strips of blue cloth were added. 

And the finished staff.