The trial-by-fire DIY-er

Thus begins the recount of the three weeks before Halloween.

The first of the three weeks was spent on research. Cosplay 101. The basics. How-to guides.
Week two was spent gathering the supplies I thought I'd need, experimenting with those supplies, building the base of the helm,  and sneezing over sample strips of faux fur.

It was about halfway through this week that I discovered the unparalleled usefulness of the Dremel. And that's when I really got to work.
Troubleshooting the helm took about a week in itself. Working a 40-hour job with a potential for overtime isn't always the best companion for projects with a time limit.
I started with a foam head model from the local crafts store and luckily the head measurements were nearly identical to my own. From there I followed a tutorial I'd found on YouTube. It was immensely helpful and I'm forever grateful to the owner, Evil Ted Smith. You can find the link to Part 1 here. I HIGHLY recommend it if you're looking for something concise and both visually and verbally instructive. The helm consists almost entirely of EVA foam garage mats (the grey puzzle-pieced stuff in the second picture) and is held together with contact adhesive wood cement. You can see the big seam down the scalp where I didn't let it dry enough and it began resisting me when I was lining it up.

The helm went through stages. I like to label the four main stages as Magneto, the ear-less Cat Woman, Beth'tilac, and finally Arthas. Those are mostly self explanatory,  but for those of you who don't know,  Beth'tilac is a spider in the Cataclysm raid Firelands. She's got these big bulky pincers and before trimming and shaping the faceguard, that's all I could see.  Big,  ridged pincers.
Magneto:

Cat Woman:

Beth'tilac pincers!

And a more recognizable Arthas-shape:

I had more trouble with the helmet than with any other part of the costume. Part of this stemmed from the fact that,  aside from Frostmourne,  the Lich King's helm is the most recognizable and iconic piece of gear. I felt the need to get it as close to the real thing as I could. And the other contributing factor was that I was under the illusion that I had some inexplicably infinite well of time.

This resulted in a carefully created helm that, while made by rather inexperienced hands, turned out pretty well all things considered. It also resulted in a frenzied all-nighter as I tried to put together nearly everything else (bar the breastplate) before work the next morning. And while I think I did okay on the paint job, the panicked speed at which I was working definitely shows in the end result in regards to the rest of those last-minute pieces of armor. (By the way, I used googly eyes for the rivets, as you'll notice on the back of the helm. I got this tip from another YouTuber, DemonWeasel1990 in his EVA foam video, which you can find here.)
The completed helm:

And finally, the completed and PAINTED helmet!