Steampunk Hallow's Eve Party~Decorations (Re-blogged)

Having a Halloween party? Want to Steampunk it up? Here are a few ideas that won't break your wallet (gotta have money for all that candy right?)! Jars of candy are a given for any Halloween party--to add just a touch of mystery & oddness you can attach labels like the one below from VectoriaDesigns.  They are much classier than your average Halloween labels, indicating the jar's contents are brains, zombie boogers, blood, etc. VectoriaDesign's labels, for instance, help set a Steampunk/Sci-Fi mood with labels like: Anti-Time Tablets, Steam Engine Oil, Octopus Ink, and my favorite Time Traveler Pills to name a few.

The labels are a digital download. Total cost: $3.50 label images (15 total), $11.99 label printer paper...$15.49

Another great digital downloadable decoration for your party are Victorian style paper dolls with a Halloween & Steampunk twist. My favorite paper doll artist is RhondasOrignials. Her dolls are by far the most unique and strikingly odd. She has over 50 paper dolls for Halloween alone. These dolls make excellent centerpieces for your table or to fill up empty space on your mantle or shelves.

What makes Rhonda's paper dolls so special is the accessories that come with each doll and the characters that she creates. You can download her dolls on her Etsy shop, click here to follow the link. Rhonda also has specials where she bundles a number of her dolls together for Halloween. The bundle costs $23.25 or you can purchase individual doll patterns for $6.00 each. The instructions on how to assemble your dolls is very easy to follow and the colors are true to how they print on your home printer. Total Cost: (for a bundle) $23.25, brads (found in your local arts & crafts store in the scrapbooking aisle)  $1.39, Aleene's Tacky Glue $2.50...$27.14

Aside from digital downloads, hit your local flea markets, garage sales, and estate sales for old jars & bottles. You can fill these bottles & jars with an assortment of items to fit the mood of your party. Inkling for a bit of twisted romance, dry some red roses beforehand and place them in your jars for a pretty bit of decay to display or paint them black (how very Alice in Wonderland of you to do so!). Want your party to look like a Mad Scientists Laboratory, fill those jars up with an assortment of colored liquids & place glow sticks inside so that they give off an eerie luminescence. There's also my DIY on steampunk candles--they're perfect for a Hallow's Eve Bash!

There are other items you can make to give your party a steampunk feel. Craft recently posted a DIY on how to make your own miniature hot air balloon.

You can suspend them from the ceiling to give your party-goers the feeling that they are on an airship deck among the clouds--you can even make clouds! Click here to find out how!

If you do not have a specific steampunk  theme in mind, you can be more general and decorate using broken machines, machine parts, clocks, and other mechanicals you may already have or ones that you can thrift. Great items to pick up: tea cups & saucers, china, clocks of any kind (you can line them all up on your mantle, table, or along your stairs), jars of light bulbs, globes or old maps, or springs (to make a garland to hang in your doorway or off your fire place).

These are just a few ideas to get you started! Stay tuned for the rest of October for my Steampunk Halloween DIY series  and get ideas on steampunkins and how  to make your own steampunk halloween costumes for adults & kids.

DIY Steampunk Wedding Bouquet

Materials & Tools:

• Flowers, real or synthetic (your choice)
• Floral wire (or any green colored wire) & wire cutters (or toenail clippers)
• Needle & thread & scissors
• Lace & ribbon (or you can choose any kind of fabric you'd like instead of lace)
• clock gear
• Pin

Steps:

1. Arrange your flowers.
2. Cut your floral wire using your wire cutters/toenail clippers. Wrap your flowers tightly with the wire to secure them.
3. Measure your lace by wrapping it around your flowers' stems for your desired width/look. I wrapped the lace 2-3 times around the stems. Once you are done wrapping your lace tuck the end into the top of your lace. 
4. Next, measure  the amount of ribbon you'll need to fit tightly around your bouquet. Be sure to leave yourself at least a 1/2 inch on one side for sewing the ribbon to your gear.
5. Loop your ribbon through the gear. Sew your ribbon to your gear. Keep your stitches small and close. (You can also secure the ribbon to your gear with a hot glue gun.)
6. Next, wrap the ribbon around your bouquet. Be sure to hold the gear in place in the front of your bouquet when you pull the loose end of the ribbon through the gear. Pin it in place with your pin (or hatpin). Cut off excess ribbon and tuck it under.
7. Promenade proudly down the aisle!Variations:

Instead of a gear, maybe pin a cameo to your bridal bouquet. It's a romantic & nostalgic twist and yet is elegant & simple.

Or look for any other kinds of pins that you could attach to your fabric or lace that ties into your wedding's theme, your heritage, or your story as a couple. Here is another variation that combines both the cameo pin & clock gear, ribbon, and simple pastel pink fabric. It's more textured & intricate--offering a much more Stemapunk vibe.

This last variation is more simple than the above pictured cameo & gear bouquet & offers a hint of sparkle. Clip-on earrings are easy enough to find at vintage stores, flea markets, & estate sales which makes them even more appealing as materials for your bridal bouquet.

Happy Wedding Planning (or day-dreaming)!

Liberate Ulysses: My Steampunk-Joyce Project

Liberate Ulysses

Liberate Ulysses is a “global dialogue & multimedia celebration for Bloomsday,” a day that pays homage to Irish writer James Joyce’s masterwork Ulysses. My passion for Joyce extends beyond my scholarship & continued reading of his works. For the past three years I have challenged myself to create pieces inspired by his texts. This year I am fortunate to be a part of Liberate Ulysses’s celebration. Last year, Liberate Ulysses lauded the novel through Twitter (a call-to-arms was issued asking those around the world to tweet an aspect of an episode that they felt was representative of that chapter). This year, to commemorate Ulysses coming out of copyright, the novel is being lionized through various artistic projects inspired by the novel. For a list of the projects, click here.

My Liberate Ulysses Project: To Create Steampunk Jewelry Pieces Representative of Each Episode

Without further ado, here they are:

Stephen “peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly”

“He watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun”

“Confession as clockwork” or as I like to think of this piece, “Agenbite of Inwit, Inwit’s Agenbite: Clockwork Confessions”

A Mourning Pin to Pine for Paddy Dignam

I found that of all the episodes, Nausicaa was the most interesting in terms of clock imagery & preoccupation. Both Bloom and Gerty ponder on & about clocks. Bloom fiddles with his watch chain and realizes that his clock has stopped (just after eight) and Gerty thinks of gifting Bloom a clock which reminds her of the one on the mantel: “white and gold with a canary bird that came out of a little house to tell the time of day.”

Not only is this a challenging episode to read, but it was difficult to try and represent it justly. I luckily happened upon an antique cigar cutter at the flea market which lead me to the idea of representing the episode through its simplest, and most central, action–birth.

Eumaeus was another challenge for me. Its techne lent me many ideas, this was the first that I thought of. Circulation is not only about blood, but in a city–circulation is electricity (the wires literally connecting spaces) and a computer’s circuit board is the circulation of information.

In Calypso, we get the description of Molly’s garters: “Night sky moon, violet” and in Penelope we finally have Molly thinking: “Id let him see my garters the new ones”–which of coarse, Bloom already has.

I hope you enjoyed these pieces. It was both challenging and entertaining to make them. Check out my blog next Bloomsday, I create something new every year! Joycefully Yours, Sam.

Inspiration Begins at Home

Happy New Year everyone! I would like to share a bit of my childhood home with you which I realized (over the holidays) is such a source of inspiration for my steampunk creations. So, welcome! One of the things everyone notices immediately is the vast number of antique sewing machines stashed in every corner of the house. I have never counted them, it would take a while, but my grams collects them. Some are encased in large, ornate wooden desks and others are tiny and fit on the fireplace mantle! Here is one of my favorite sewing machines--an 1882 Singer with gold embellishments. I grew up with the whirr of sewing machines and have (as some of you know from seeing it at Indie Emporium 2 years ago) an old Singer sewing machine of my own! Other antique sewing ephemera litter the house and among the most treasured are these crazy quilted pincushions (made by my mom).

In the living room hangs my mother's family crest (carved by my Uncle Jeff). The crest of the Crawfords--a shield with small trees (my family resided in Scotland and lived near the species of tree etched into the shield), a helmet, and adorned with looping scrolls. Below reads "Stant Innixa Deo," Latin for "They Stand Supported By God."

Upstairs you can find just as many old-world marvels, wooden ships, medicine jars, and water basins.

Scattered about the house are old clocks--ones whose chimes I can still hear if I close my eyes at the start of a new hour. Pictured left is a doll hand sewn by my mom. Her name is Cordelia, the Victorian Lady. She has a high collar and lace embellishments on her dress and a marvelous green sash. Her jet beads set of her jet hair amassed in a Gibson Girl bun atop her head.

The last treasure I will share with you is a painted picture of a ball. It rests in our living room. I can almost hear the rustling of the ladies' dresses as they are sashayed past by their beaus and the merry music of the orchestra.

These are just a few of the inspirations I have found around home. What are yours?