One thing I find I need most at steampunk events is a fan, as the rooms can be very hot. The second most common thing I need is a parasol, since many of our local events involve being outside. So I wanted a matching fan and parasol that would be quick and easy to make, not too expensive and easily replaceable when lost or damaged. So I decided to decorate cheap premade bamboo and fabric fan and parasol with silver and black sharpy.
The sharpy worked pretty well on the fabric surfaces and made a really quick way to decorate a fan and parasol. I was worried these would still be a little plain, so I decided to make a new handle for the parasol, a new topper for the parasol and a decoration for a fan tassel. Keeping with the theme, I used some epoxy sculpt to make some tentacle pieces. I had some brown epoxy sculpt that I figured would make a good base for copper coloring later. I have never worked with epoxy sculpt before and it is really sticky. It also took longer than I expected to get to the stage where it would hold detail. I had to work up the material and then let it sit for a while before molding details. This was very frustrating as I did all the detail to start with and had to redo it after the material set up a bit!
It was really easy to glue the new handle and topper to the parasol, and I think they make the parasol a bit more unique.
Final details for the fan and parasol was adding a little trim. For the fan, I quickly whip stitched on some black lace and for the parasol, I added some black and silver fringe. These both came from my stash and made a great use of some scrap trim I had laying around. When I sculpted the smaller tentacle above, I used a straw to make a hole so the tentacle could be threaded on a ribbon to add to the fan handle.
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