Making the holy lyre

I first went as Venti to Fanime '25 and while I had a lot of fun, I felt something was missing. While every character has their characteristic weapon, the lyre is undoubtably the Anemo Archon's signature item. Thus I set out to bring it to life.

They say that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My main tools have always been my 3D printer, a jar of super glue, and spray paint. I started off by searching for existing designs online, and sure enough I found a model matching the quest item picture by 3Dimensions_Titi on Cults3D (at the time of writing, it is not listed publicly anymore). Here's a low-poly export of the model I went with:

To make painting easier I opted for white filament. This took slightly less than a week to print on the Ender 3 at full scale. In the meantime, I started preparing for painting and other accessories. I searched the internet for other cosplayers' creations, and found a variety of different designs.

I don't know how to play any stringed instruments so I didn't attempt to use strings under tension, I used blue insulated ~20 gauge wire. For the flowers, I used lillies that were on sale at Michaels. Since I no longer live close enough to raid my parents' spray paint can collection, I bought some basic acrylic paint.

The 3D print was already sliced into 9 pieces with holes reserved for dowel rods (I used 1/8" as the recommended metric size was not available). Each piece was first dry sanded and then 3 coats of automotive sandable primer were applied (the smell of the primer was so strong and lasted for several days even after painting). The dowels were inserted and the pieces were assembled together with CA glue.

Painting was a bit of a struggle for me and took >4 hours across two nights. I often strayed outside the lines as can be seen here.

Applying another coat gave me the opportunity to clean up the mistakes. It was convenient that all of the colors were dark, as they easily covered each other. Finally it was time to add the wire and the flowers

and that's it! Unforunately, I dropped it on the ground in the hotel room and it immediately shattered back into 9 pieces. Luckily, with some extra dowels, glue, an a half hour, it became one piece again, right in time for the cosplay gathering on day 3.