Fallout Props

I made some Fallout stuff. It's amazing how many props I was able to recreate after playing a little more fallout and looking at google images. And so many more could potentially be made from this series as well. I used some various new techniques on this and learned quite a bit. Hit the jump to see some more pictures I took in the process of replicating these.

Started out with a vintage lunch box from who knows when. It's older than me that's for sure. I made sure to find one that didn't already have art on it. I know that some people collect these things, and although Strawberry Shortcake means nothing to me, I know other people out there might want it. It just felt like I was doing less evil using a plain one.

I actually pulled the Vault Boy characters from the fallout wiki. They were in black and white so I had to color them and add them to a background using Paint.net. Thanks Tim. I printed all the art onto full sheet label paper. Everything was antiqued using acrylic paint, play sand, wire brush, and sand paper. I then sealed it using polyurethane.

 When I first started doing this I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. The first method I tried was Mod Podging a printed sheet of paper to the tin. It turned out ok but after sitting in the hot car, the paper bubbled up and was ruined. After this I tried a process called toner transfer method. Basically you print your image in reverse and iron it onto your surface. Didn't turn out too bad but I liked the way the paper looked better after being painted and torched.

So I used the paper. Though this time, I printed it onto self adhesive label paper. Then I used acrylic paint to orange it and a little red for rust. After that I took the torch to it and burned the corner. A copper wire brush removed the peices that were too charred, and helped blend the effect in. Afterward I rubbed in play sand all over the tin to give it an old worn look. 

I still had the problem with humidity and the label peeling. So I sacrificed 9 stickers to the science gods. On each sticker I applied a different technique for sealing them. As it turns out polyurethane wins again. I'm really just now understanding how wonderful that stuff is and how terribly it may kill the user.

This close up of one of the tins after applying several different methods. It is slightly glossy and the burn mark has a really cool crackling thing going for it.

 In order to get the vault logo onto the thermos, it had to be able to stick. Otherwise the teeth of the cogs lift off and you wont get a decent image when painting. So what I did was cover a piece of wax paper with masking tape, then tape the stencil on top of that.

 After cutting the stencil, the wax paper easily peeled off the tape. Leaving behind a pretty nice sticky stencil. I will definitely use this method again.

It came out pretty good. A little touch up was required by scraping the details with an xacto knife. Then it was only a matter of detailing it the same way I did the lunchbox and mint tins.

I used cotton cloth paper for these bills. On account that only the US Mint is allowed to purchase 75% cotton 25% linen blend. After rubbing the paper lightly with sand paper and darkening the edges with a soldering iron, the bills turned out pretty good. I would love to play a game of caravan using these and the caps as the pot.

Just like a good counterfeiter, I made a front page and a back page and printed to both sides. It took a little thought to get this just right, but I managed to pull it off.

Why do some images flip when uploading them to my blog?

 Nuka-Cola. Mildly irradiated, Extraordinarily Delicious.

 

 A lot of people, I noticed, use the American Coke bottles when doing these props. I think the taller Mexican bottles fit the in game bottles more. So I used those. First things first. Drink. Then removed the labels with a wire brush wheel on my drill press.

Cut some bottle cap stickers out of more label paper and stuck them to the bottles. Brushed them with the wire brush and called it done. Looks pretty good. however I would make the stickers bigger next time.

 

I actually purchased a capper and new caps to professionally seal up the bottle after replacing the cola with a blue liquid and isopropyl alcohol to prevent it from growing mold.

Right now the Quantum is only glowing with an LED sitting behind it. I want to drill out the bottom and install circuitry and a battery to have a hand held glowing bottle. But that's on the Shelf for now.

Well that's it for fallout for now. I may come back to this franchise later for some other props like Stimpaks and Radaway.

If you would like any of these builds, I may still have some for sale in my etsy store linked in the sidebar.

Comment and tell me how you like them!