Paint the ball completely or work in segments — it all depends on your taste. Lastly, they peeled the masking tape not long after painting. Transparent Plastic Sphere: To use as the mould. I found a cheap ball for hamsters (~16cm diameter) that splits in half and has a handy access hole. You can usually find plastic balls - I had a similar size one that was briefly full of chocolate pieces...

Once you’re satisfied with the look of your pattern, you can paint a darker shade of paint over the whole ball. Who hasn't dreamed of owning a half-destroyed battle station made of concrete that functions as a light? Anyone? Okay, so it's not exactly practical but it was fun to try to something new. It'd be great if we can cement the optical fibres into the Death Star. However, fibre optic cables (even the plastic ones) snap, break and pull out easily. It might not matter if I used an actual mold (e.g. a ball within a ball) and poured the concrete in...but I was going to be slapping a concrete mix onto the inside of a ball. So I pre-drill the holes and use craft foam to cover them. Then I'll remake the holes with pins after the concrete has been added.Make sure to press the tape down well before painting to avoid leaks and blotches. But even if you have some slight uneven lines — the end result will be great. TheDeathStarhas so many little bits and dots, it will look like you wanted it this way 😉 Where the predrilled holes were, I pushed dressmaker pins through the craft foam and the cement. This is obviously easier to do whilst the cement is still wet. I didn't push the pins in complete so I could pull them out more easily. It's easier to work on the inside of the sphere if it's in halves. So first I split the ball...well actually, I dropped it accidentally and it fell apart. I took the opportunity to rip off the plastic tabs holding the sphere together otherwise it would've been annoying to take it apart later. My shell came with handy grid lines on the shell - you can always draw them if they're missing to help with the layout. Super-laser

The next step is to prepare your favourite cement mix. Cement is not good for your health - I made sure to wear goggles, a mask, nitrite gloves, and did all the mixing outside. After searching for some reference pictures for Death Star 2 from Star Wars Episode VI, I sketched out with a sharpie where the damaged sections should be. There's a line of damage that runs across the entire front (below the super-laser) and the whole top-right and bottom-right sections are deeply damaged, concave and exposed. The edge of these damaged areas show the lattice structure of the space station but the middle be indented. Deep damage sections Fiba Tape: Alkali-resistant tape to add tensile strength to concrete. The grey grid pattern shown underneath the transparent sections should also make it look a bit like the building structure. Drill & Bit (1.5mm) & Hole-saw bit (54mm): To make holes. Also to cut out a circle to make the super-laser part.

META

She’s provided a scanned template of the laser in 3 versions. The template was drawn by hand so it was hard to get a clear scan. But you may still be able to use it as a starting point for a template. It fits on a sheet of A4 paper and is meant for the 52 cm diameter version — for the smaller ones you’ll need to size it down. For the super-laser a ring of foam the size of the circle was cut and attached. For the inner piece, I pushed various circular objects (bottle caps, cups, etc) into a disc of foam to make marks. I then cut random shapes out along the arc segments and glued it in place. Sealing the foam