Wild Wild West Con 4 Part 1

This year I was lucky enough to attend Wild Wild West Con 4 (WWWC4).  This convention has long been a favorite of mine and I have been lucky enough to attend 3 of the 4 years.  The convention is held at Old Tucson Studios which is an old western movie studio and amusement park.  The setting is beautiful and makes for great pictures and Old Tucson has some cool things of its own that make for a unique experience.  I attended this year with the Albuquerque Steampunk Society, so there was a whole group of us together.

I am going to show some of the costumes we wore and a selection of really cool costumes I managed to get pictures of.  Really there were too many cool costumes to count!

The theme was Mad Science so my husband and I wore some of our good old standby costumes.  One of the first set of costumes I made for steampunk was a Radium doctor and a Mad Apothecary and I felt these fit the theme pretty well.
The Radium doctor costume is worn over a corset and petticoats followed by a brown cotton skirt with dark brown velvet detailing.  The white shirt is a horrible 1980s eyelet lace thing that I got cheaply at a thrift store and altered to make a quick blouse.  The apron is all leather and is riveted together.  The test tubes contain cake sugars.  The head mirror is actually an antique and I also carry an antique doctors bag, which was a gift from some friends.  One of my favorite parts of this costume is the radium detector (the funny looking wand and box in the pictures).  This prop was made by my husband specifically for this costume.  The wand is made out of copper tubing and brass pipe fittings. The detector is a large glass crystal set in cut and flared copper pipe. The detector has a set of blue LEDs wired into the copper pipe behind the crystal, which causes the whole crystal to glow blue when activated.  The box part was a cheap box purse from a craft store that my husband altered.  The box contains an old MP3 player and a small amplifier.  When the button on the lid is pressed the MP3 player either plays a Geiger counter noise of yells "Whoop Whoop Danger!" I have no idea which one will play as it is random.  At the convention, the only person the radium detector felt was dangerous is Nathaniel Johnstone!  I scanned him and the danger signal when off!  He is both an amazing musician and a super nice guy and I was very excited to get to meet him!  The Mad Apothecary is made of linen and has embroidered fraying patches I made using designs from Urban Threads.  My husband made the leather hat himself as well as the goggles we are both wearing.  He even made mine with blue glass!

The second day we went really easy and simple in our costumes.  I wore my super comfy outfit made especially for warm weather. The details of the construction are covered in my Steampunk mix and match post.  One my favorite things about this outfit is the voice stealing gun.  I actually got to use this gun on the performers that day! I stole sound from the League of STEAM during one of their performances and again at the Abney Park concert that evening. 

My husband wore a vest I made to match my corset, his teacup holster I made him and a new hat.  This hat has vents added to the side to make it cooler and EL wire to make it light up.  I will do a separate post on how I altered the hat.  He is also using his cane.  The cane has a large glass crystal and a whole set of multicolored LEDS so he can change the color and the pattern for the lights.


I even managed to remember to take some photos the second day and got some good ones of some of the people we traveled with.  These lovely ladies traveled each day from the hotel to the con with us. The lovely green fairy was made by Isabella Delphinia Ravensdale. On her tumblr she talks about the making of this costume.  She made some absolutely lovely accessories which none of my pictures due justice!



 
One of the reasons to go simple this day is that we were planning on an absinthe tasting and then be really silly afterward on some of the amusement rides.  The absinthe tasting was a blast and we even had our own Absinthe Fairy to keep us company.

 After partaking in the Absinthe treat, we decided to brave some of the local amusements.  I am sure many people were laughing at us as most of us were trying to ride the carousel horses side saddle!  Of course it did not help that most of us were laughing so hard that we were all having a hard time staying on the horses.

After the carousel, we decided to ride the little train that tours the park and hear more about Old Tucson Studios.  The train goes places that you cannot walk and the conductors give a bunch of background on what television shows and what movies utilized which buildings.  It was a fascinating tour.  Both of these activities were great fun and included for free with our con membership. 

Sunday was the big day for the Albuquerque Steampunk Society.  11 of us decided to join together and dress as Alice in Wonderland Characters.  First up we have Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  These costumes were made by Permelia Blackwell based off of the Disney Alice in Wonderland.  She discusses the making of these costumes as well as her other costumes on her blog.  I completely love her take on the Tweedles!

The rest of our car riding group consisted of the 8 of Diamonds, made by Isabella Delphinia Ravensdale. Myself as the Cheshire Cat and my husband as the Caterpillar.  I covered the making of both of these costumes earlier on this blog, so I wont cover any of it here. 








Later in the day we caught up with the other members of the group and took some pictures with a very old and cool steam train.  We had a White Rabbit, a Mad Hatter, a Red Queen, a White Queen, Alice and the Doormouse.

Here is Alice talking with the Doormouse, White Rabbit and the Caterpillar while the Mad Hatter looks for trouble.

The Red Queen and the White Queen were having a hard time keeping their parasols to themselves!

I have just noticed how long this post is getting, so I am going to save pictures of other people's costumes and the make and take workshops for Part 2.