I've done lot of brain work with Luminara's belt buckles and few days ago I took the bull from its horns and started crafting. I've seen buckles that resemble the original ones, but never have I found exact copies. Nitpicky as I am, I had to get as close as possible. I have the simpler buckle done and fail-painted. The spray paint I used was really poor quality. I was able to get the bubbles out, which can still be seen in the picture. I'm going to paint it again with acrylics and trim the edges a little.
After painting the buckle, I need to weather it with black paint to give the design more depth. I also need to make the other, more difficult one and then come up with a fastening mechanism. I'm leaning forward to making the front of the belt “fake” and hiding the real buckle or snaps to the back, where the belt is covered by the cape. This way I would not need to worry about ruining the buckle while trying to make a tongue to it or about breaking the whole thing.
We have thought about applying to Rebel Legion with Luminara and Barriss, which makes having a lightsaber or the hilt of it necessary. I started constructing version 1 saber hilt a day prior to the buckles. The base is a carton tube from baking paper container and the covering is craft foam. There are insulation foam structures in both ends of the hilt. With the previous materials the hilt is really light, but looks neat. After covering it with glue I will paint it and add buttons and other required details.
As I stated the saber is just a version 1. If we get accepted to the Legion, we will make sabers with the blade later on. I also wanted to have little simpler props to work on now, because we are going to wear the costumes in two months and we will be busy on our own quarters for at least a month.