Week 30, "teacup"

We had a teacup contest at the Sacramento Steampunk Society's picnic, which I wanted to enter.  I found an old plastic mug in my room which was made for paper inserts which were kind of like mini coloring book pages.  So I cut a piece of paper to the right size and started designing an appropriate scene.  Since the theme of the picnic was Lovecraftian I included some tentacles, but on a cute octopus and some kind of squid having an underwater tea party.  I gave them both steamy accessories, and their tea is actually time, which is of course poured from a bottle.  They also have a plate of the undersea equivalent of teacakes or finger sandwiches, urchins and starfish.  The squid is gesturing emphatically with a spoon which is unfortunately invisible behind the rim of the mug, while the octopus giggles.  I think they might be courting.  Most of the color was done with Sharpies, although I did use gel pens here and there.  It did take me more like two weeks, though, so this is a FAILURE.

I drew his moustache and monocle before I looked at actual reference photos of squid and realized that their eyes are much further down than that.  But I liked the way it looked, so I kept it anyway.

Week 47, I'm sick of this format

I was going to make a miniature version of last week's hat with what was left of the Timtex, but as often happens late in the week I realized that I needed something else.  In this case, we were hosting a swap meet for the Sacramento Steampunk Society and needed a sign to put on the fence so people could find the place.  I was just going to print up a larger version of our regular meeting sign (which was my Steampunk Thing of the Week way back on week 7), but the printer refused to cooperate.  So I traced it from the computer screen.

Five sheets of paper held together with double-stick tape (because that's all I could find).
I knew those little tiny lines wouldn't be visible from a distance, so I wasn't done yet.  I wanted to color it with markers, but what I found were old, dead markers, gel pens (which would have taken forever), crayons, and a set of oil pastels.  So I decided to try the pastels.

Even using techniques to speed it up (mainly the one called "scribbling"), I still finished at about 6:20 on Thursday, which was ten minutes before the event was supposed to start and after people had started arriving.  Unfortunately, the sun went down not too long after that, and the street lamp in front of our house works only intermittently, so I'm not sure it was any help to anyone.  However, now that it's made it can be used for other events, and I think I'll clip a light to the fence to make it more visible.

Week 46

Factors working against me: Time.  I also was working with a type of material I'd never used before (Timtex), so I didn't know how well it would work.

Factors working for me: I knew what I wanted to make: a hat to wear on the weekend.  But first I went internet shopping for Edwardian blouses and brown leather waist cinchers.  I couldn't find anything that looked how I wanted, so I decided to make a simple instant steampunk waist cincher.
Results:  It's a rectangle with belt loops.

Just add belts.

After wearing it on the Sacramento Steampunk Society/ Great Basin Costume Society steam train excursion, I realized the belts all tend to slide together, bunching up the fabric, so I'm going to add some boning.
Bonus:  I ended up finishing the hat I originally wanted to make for this week's Thing in the truck on the way to Carson City Saturday night.  I still want to add flowers, but I wore it as-is so I'd say it counts.

Week 38, great and not-so-great

Factors working against me: As usual, I left things until late, which means I did the entirety of this week's Thing Saturday night.
Factors working for me: The next day was the Sacramento Steampunk Society's trip to the zoo.  As part of the event we had planned to have water gun duels in the park, so it was obvious what I needed to make.
Results: Here are the guns I started out with:

They were a pair of matching pistols once, although the orange one lost its trigger guard at some point.  The first thing I had to do was use a dab of caulk to seal a hole where it had broken off that opened directly into the water chamber (which is basically the whole gun).  Then I spray-painted them with a base coat.  The green one became flat black and the orange one shiny chrome.

Here is the black gun completed:

I shined it up with a little silver Rub'n'Buff, copper acrylic paint, 3D stickers from the scrapbooking section at Michael's, and a couple small bits of a clock I took apart a while back.  I also used some paint thinner on a Q-tip to restore a small section of the gun to translucent green, which gives it a little of a futuristic feel in contrast to the antiqued look of the rest of it.  A word of warning: I have found that acrylic paints are not the best for squirt guns, as they tend to soften up with water and may rub off.  In this case, I temporarily lost one of the stickers placed on top of the copper paint.  I will look for something to seal it with before I take this gun to any more events.
Here's how the other one came out:

Somewhat less satisfactory, to the point I'm not sure I should count it as a bonus Thing (although I did take it to the zoo like this).  I could tell pretty early on that I was going to want to re-do most of this gun at a later time.  I wanted it to complement the other gun, with a slight Western feel, but with a color scheme that revolved around pearls.  However, the placement of the pearls is less than ideal (I really only put them there to cover up the "Made in China", which can be sanded off).  I also attempted to paint on faux mother-of-pearl inlay, but the color is off.  Not to mention the clock parts at the back/top of the gun are held on with Scotch tape, since superglue wasn't working.  Another thing I wanted to do with it, but didn't have time for, was to put sandy-colored paint in the cracks which would hopefully be evocative of desert mud, make it less shiny, and pull in the orange cameos (which are actually more scrapbooking stickers) to the overall color scheme of the gun.

Week 22 quick post

I was going to make a corset belt, but got lazy.  So I got out my button maker instead to make button earrings with the Sacramento Steampunk Society logo.  Still not done, so no pictures.

Week 18 quick post

Results:  It was meant to be a cloche, but for some reason several people said "pith helmet".

Week 17, from inside the machine

Factors working against me: I intended to make a tiny top hat using a spool and a scrap of faux leather. However, when I had sewn this far (see picture). . .

. . . I realized that the edges weren't going to meet.  I really should have figured it out earlier, since I'd been stretching the "leather" to get it to sit right on the spool. So I decided that wasn't going to work and tried glue. Which didn't work either. At this point I was frustrated and discouraged, and I knew I had at most two hours left to work before my dad came home and wanted to watch Buffy with me. So rather than messing about with different types of glue I decided to make something else entirely.

Factors working for me: Right then, my mom called, and we discussed ideas for quick Steampunk Things while I dug though my crafting kit. We agreed jewelry was fastest and easiest (she suggested more cookies, but I never bought replacement ingredients, so that would have been an adventure in improvisation and inedibility). I wanted to do something a little different than what I'd made before, and while considering my options (earrings, necklace, pin. . . not a ring because I didn't have my ring blanks) I came across some chains and remembered a discussion we had at one of the Sacramento Steampunk Society meetings about necklaces with antique keys for pendants.
Results: I knew I wanted to do something chain-heavy, and I didn't want to bite the style of the person who gave me the idea. As I was choosing chains I considered that most of the multi-chain necklaces I've seen have a similar look to them. In order to avoid that I decided to make a choker. Then I attached the key asymmetrically. It still needed something, so I used the leftover bits of chain to attach some pieces from a clock I took apart, and the very last of the chain I used to support the key at its original angle, despite the rest of the stuff weighing it down.

I've worn it almost constantly since its completion, so I think this is one I'm going to keep.

Week 16, not very green

Factors working against me:  It seems to be becoming a habit to procrastinate until the end of the week, so I'm not even going to bother trying to come up with excuses.
Factors working for me:  At Thursday's meeting of the Sacramento Steampunk Society, Admiral Macabre gave a demonstration of Sophisticated Finishes' Metallic Surfacers and Antiquing Solutions.  He left behind a nearly empty bottle of each, with which I decided to experiment.  Also, I found a bit of ribbon in the bottom of my messenger bag.
Results:  I looked up instructions online for how to make a ribbon rose.
Here is the ribbon I used:

Here I have painted it with the copper paint:

 

I then waited three minutes before folding it, only I decided to make myself a sandwich and it ended up being more than three minutes, and then the folding took longer than I thought it would too, so it was more than fifteen minutes before I applied the antiquing solution.  Here is the folded rose:

And here is what it looked like when I checked on it several hours later:

More like rusty mud than verdegrised (is that a word? I suspect not) copper.  It looks much greener in the picture than it did in real life. A lot of the ribbon color is showing as well. So I scraped the inside of the bottle with a Q-tip in order to give it another coat. This went on pretty thick:

I made sure this time to put the antiquing solution on well within fifteen minutes, and lots of it.

I got some pretty nice patina effects on the Q-tip and paper towel I used to apply the solutions, but the rose still looks more rusted than anything. That works too, though, I guess. Now I just have to find (or make) something to attach it to.

Week 15 onscreen!

Factors working against me: Sunday, as I mentioned before, was the Thrift Shopping Expedition, so I wasn't able to get much work done that day.  I went to my mom's house afterward because she was about to leave town for two weeks and wanted to see me beforehand.  Thursday was our trip to the Crocker, so Wednesday night I had to get back in town so I'd have time to prepare.
Factors working for me: I found some beads at Michaels (where we met up for the Expedition) that were perfect for the jewelry I wanted to make for one of my outfits for the Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition.
Results: Normally my rule is if I wouldn't put the tag "steampunk" on an item when listing it on etsy, it isn't steampunk enough to count as my Steampunk Thing of the Week.  However, these were made specifically for a steampunk convention, so I'm making an exception.

I was going for the look of old, cracked chandelier crystals.  I'm not entirely sure they aren't too heavy for me, though.

Week 14, sweet cuisine

Factors working against me: Again, it's been too long since the actual events for me to remember the details.  All I know is I put things off until Saturday night.  Again.
Factors working for me: My father reminded me as I was about to go to bed that the next day was our Steampunk Thrift Shopping Expedition, for which I had planned to make cookies.  So I scrambled to find ingredients and had to make some substitutions.
Results: Ta-da!  An entire batch of vaguely gear-shaped cookies.

I don't think all of them were done by midnight, but enough to count.

Week 2, because I O U

Here, finally, is that photograph of week 2's Thing, only about a month or two later than the "week or two" I promised.  To be fair, I totally would have photographed it week 7 if it hadn't been misplaced after I wore it to the Sacramento Steampunk Society meeting.

Week 7 got turned up to eleven

Factors working against me: I wanted to take it to the Sacramento Steampunk Society Meetup on Wednesday, which meant I only had half a week.
Factors working for me:  I was pretty motivated to make the meetup cool since it was the first one and we wanted people to keep coming.
Results:  I made a letterhead for note-taking.  My dad saw it and asked me to do something similar to his sign-in chart, so I did that too.  I had everything printed up by 3:30 Wednesday morning, which makes this the earliest completion yet by far.
Bonus:  The Thing was actually just the note paper, so bonus #1 is the Guestbook pages.  Bonus #2 is something that occurred to me later in the day Wednesday after I woke up: a table sign to let people know where the Steampunks were, in case they couldn't tell by looking for people in costume.  Here's a photo of everything:

We ended up putting the sign in a fancy picture frame (which I had to glue because the back was falling off):

I'm also making some Christmas presents, so I haven't had time to finish the Things from weeks 5 and 6, which are racking up some SERIOUS overtime.

Week 1 done!

Factors working against me: 1.We didn't get home from Steam-Con until 1am Tuesday morning.  2.  It's Halloween week, which means I had to make a costume too!  3. I had trouble forcing myself to get out of bed because it was freezing cold in my room.  Of course, once I did, the sunlight streaming into every other room in the house was much warmer than my THREE BLANKETS + FLANNEL SHEETS.  WTP.
Factors working for me: I had bought the materials for a LOTR elf costume a while back, but before I started working on it, my dad asked me to dress steampunk instead in an attempt to recruit members for a local Steampunk Society. So I threw this together:

I used a plastic shopping bag full of stuffing for the bustle.

Results: I finished my Thing of the Week about 11pm on Saturday.  I made a pair of gogglies similar to the ones I made for myself last week.

For comparison purposes: the top pair is mine, and the bottom pair is my Steampunk Thing of the Week (which is for sale at the Steamtopia Etsy Shop).

Also: This didn't get done in time to count as a Bonus Steampunk Thing of the Week, but about 15 minutes after midnight I finished this:

A while ago I got sick of having so many white socks and decided to do something about it. So I'm hand-painting them all with different patterns. This way I don't even have to worry about finding a matching pair!