Updated 10/12:
Well, I haven't shown any progress in awhile because I started working on my helmet, which has been slow going, and then I took a week off to get ready for a Halloween party at my house. But, next weekend, my sister has a gender reveal themed "Luke or Leia," so it's full speed ahead to have something wearable (not approvable, but wearable) by that date. Over the weekend, here's how far I got:
1. Body armor sanded and shaped
2. Target Boba Fett purchased for simple paint job (faster than cranking out my scratch helmet)
3. Flak vest purchased
4. Knees, cod, and basic gaunts sanded and shaped
To do this week:
1. Breast plates need final round of sanding over bondo'ed seams
2. Right breast and ab need sanding and shaping where the gap ended up too wide
3. Paint all body armor- metallic base coat only
4. Apply velcro
5. Smooth out bondo on BF helmet
6. Apply first level of basic embellishment to gaunts
To do later:
1. Make new pauldrons (decided I want to match the knees rather than the original ones I made)
2. Helmet, helmet, helmet. Ugh, helmet.
3. Flight suit
4. Paint job with damage
5. Expand armor set to include parts for medium (right now, only cut for light)
And to fulfill my promise of pic heavy:
IMG]http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/vluvski/IMAG1006_zpsyqyezomh.jpg[/IMG]
IMG]http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/vluvski/IMAG1020_zpspcnpc87p.jpg[/IMG]


Original Post:
A couple weeks ago, I went to a con, and saw a super cool Mando wandering around. We ran into eachother on facebook a few days later, and when she said she built her own armor, I knew I had to be a copycat and make some for myself, too.
In two weeks time, I have gone from never having heard of Sintra or PVC foam or the Mandalorian Mercs, to having a molded set of chest and shoulder plates.
My primary raw material is black 3mm PVC foam (Celtec) which I acquired from Amazon at a ridiculously reasonably price. I have a heat gun, reamer, straight and curved lexan scissors, and standard shears.
I also bought a set of aluminum hemisphere pans to use as molds for the cups. Initially I tried to heat up the whole sheet and sandwich the sheet of celtec between two, but I found that I could work faster and with more precision focusing on one area at a time. I can hit one spot with the heat gun (once it is warmed up) on HIGH for 10 seconds, and it is just barely cool enough not to burn myself without gloves, but flexible enough to mold. I've been using the 4" hemisphere on the bottom, and rolling the back of a kitchen ladle on the top to mold about 2 square inches at a time or less. This technique was especially effective for ironing our the peaks around my darts; there just isn't enough give to the board to stretch it for a good fit without the darts, for me anyway.
The following pictures reflect one short morning and one long afternoon of work the following day:
First deformation:

First cup formed (lots of gaps because it didn't form evenly and resulted in too little material at the center of the chest:

First cup right; second cup left, and a kids' vader chest plate because the second cup was really frustrating me. Ultimately the darts spread out worked better once I came up with the ladle against the aluminum hemisphere pan technique to roll out the pointiness:

I had to puzzle in some scrap to make up for the gaps at the center of the first cup:

Originally I planned to use the traditional chest diamond, but I kind of liked the shield-shaped outline created by the 2nd cup. Initially I was going to make it flush across the top of the chest plates with a separate collar, but when I drew it out, I didn't like how squared off it looked. I came up with this instead.


It also shows how I used the scrap pieces cut from the collar to build the shoulder armor:

I had to do a lot of trimming and test fitting to get it all lined up correctly:

And my stopping point completing the basic formation for the chest and shoulder armor:

This represents about 9 hours of interrupted work over two days, also including the simple vader shoulder plate and a toy car for my kids, in exchange for them not interrupting me constantly.
Jury is still out on glue. I had some "plastic model cement" on hand that worked alright just to get things secured, but it gets pretty flexible when heated. I then tried superglue (ethyl cyanoacrylate), which took longer than expected to set (20+ minutes), and released nasty, eye-watering fumes when re-heated. My friend L suggested hot glue and bondo: would love to hear more feedback. Hot glue seems like a good way to set something temporarily, but I don't see it sanding well for a nice finish.
Thanks for reading!