Hi vode! In making my kit I found a much easier way to make chest plates for us ladies and I thought I should share it with all of you. Instead of cutting out plates from flat sintra and having to wrestle with shaping and darting, I used a fencing chest protector.
These things are already shaped to fit us gals and are readily available from most fencing supply stores. I ordered mine from this site
http://www.blue-gauntlet.com/BG-Full-Chest-PROTECTOR-Sizes-for-women_p_3741.html I'm a size 36B and the small fit me just fine.
So, once you get your chest protector you'll need to trace the mando chest plate template onto it.
I used this plate template from the female template resource board to trace mine
http://waffleha.us/external/mercs/ViraPlates.pdfI used a dremel to cut mine out, making sure to cut a little outside of the trace lines since dremels tend to melt the plastic a bit while cutting. You'll also need to sand out any logos present and fill in the ventilation holes with bondo. Once you're done you should have something that looks like this. (I took this one before I filled the holes in mine).
The chest protector is a little short to completely accommodate the template, so you'll most likely have to make a spacer plate to go between your chest and collar plates, but that will still pass the CRLs. Here's a photo of mine so you have some idea of how it looks together.
Now, I'm not sure exactly what type of plastic these things are made out of but they can still be shaped with a heat gun just as you would with sintra incase you need to make any fit adjustments. The only thing I noticed is that once heated you have to hold it in place longer while it cools to get it to hold the shape you want.
Once you have your plates cut make sure to sand the daylights out of them and use a good primer on them before you paint. You can see how mine went from being kinda glossy to start with to being significantly dulled after the sanding. This type of plastic can be a little stubborn with paint, but as long as it's sanded well and primed you should be fine. Here's my finished product
I hope y'all find this useful and that is saves you the pain of shaping. If you've got any questions feel free to ask.