Making foam armor

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Today I got down to working on my costume armor in earnest. I already showed you how I made a mold for it by covering my dress form Adelaide in aluminum foil and duct tape. I drew the pieces onto the duct tape, marking three separate pieces in the breast plate, one for the décolleté, one for the bust, and one for the stomach, in order to get the proper curvature. I then cut the whole mold off of Adelaide and cut it apart as marked. In order to make it possible to sit down while wearing, I ended up raising the "hem" a fair bit.

In order to keep it symmetrical, I cut each piece in half to just use one for both sides. The bust piece I cut two darts into, one from the bottom and one from the side. I traced each piece in foam by first tracing the piece facing up, then flipping it to finish the other half.



Then I cut these pieces out. Using hot glue, I glued the darts closed in the bust, then I took some scrap fabric out of my fabric box (this was left over from the shower curtain I altered for my upstairs bathroom) and glued it inside each piece to line them.



Then I assembled them all together with hot glue. For detailing I cut tiny little strips of foam, then glued them along the edges of the breastplate.



I made the black plate similarly. Since it needed less curvature, I did it in two pieces only, the left and right sides. Both of them I painted over with Mod Podge, a kind of decoupage glue.



It's drying now, the second coat on the breastplate and the first on the back plate. I want to sort of create a smooth surface on both of them, obscuring the seams as much as possible. I'm trying to see if enough layers of Modge Podge can accomplish that. I've also read suggestions to sand it, but I'm afraid of ripping through my rather thing craft foam. Might just be that if I paint it well enough, it will hide those things. Hopefully the Mod Podge will act like a sort of gesso or primer to prepare the foam for painting.