Tentacle fan and parasol: quick accessories

 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!

Once dry however, it took rub-n-buff really well to make a nice copper looking set of decorations.

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.   

These items were pretty quick to make and get a surprising amount of use!  I am always in need of a fan or a parasol and since these were relatively cheap, I dont worry too much about losing them or breaking them.

Glinda the Good Witch; LED Skirt

Out of this whole costume the skirt took the longest simply due to the fact that I really wanted it to light up and stitching tons of LED wires by hand is really really slow.

The skirt is 2 layers, the bottom layer is smooth, pink, pearlized, sheer fabric.  It is a basic A-line cut gathered into a pink elastic waist band.  The simple cut let me stitch LED strings all over this base skirt.  The LEDs are Flora RGB neopixels from Adafruit, these can produce full 24-bit color, are ultra-bright, can be chained together and can respond rapidly to programmed instructions.  Each stand in the skirt is 8 Flora neopixels strung together with clear wire and there are 8 strands.  You can use conductive threads for these, but the loss in conductivity over the length of the skirt would be too much, so for this size project, I used wire.  Once wired, I stitched the LED strands to the skirt.  The stitching pattern was random and the strands were designed to have different spacing between the LEDs to make it a little more organic looking.

 The wiring all runs to a pouch under the bustled overskirt which is high enough that I don't sit on it, but low enough that it is not under the corset.  The Arduino controller and the LiPo batteries are held in this pouch.

The overskirt is much fuller than the underskirt and is made of crinkled, pink, pearlized, sheer fabric.   The overskirt is floor length in the front and slightly longer in the back to allow the skirt to be bustled slightly by tapes in the back (you can see 2 of the white ribbon tapes for the bustle in the pouch photo).  The ruffle at the bottom of the skirt goes all the way around the skirt.  To the front of the skirt, I cut out gear shapes in random shiny fabrics I had laying around.  These fabrics were gifted to me and were 1/8 yard strips in 16 colors, I used all the pink tones for this skirt.  These two fabrics (the pearlized sheer and the slippery shiny stuff) were horrible to sew and every attempt I had to applique this stuff failed, so the gears are glued on with fabric glue.

To the back, I added a couple of elements to enhance the bustle, these were based on 1860s fashions were you start to see extra stuff down the back, but the skirts still have fairly round hoop support.  The added bits are pretty free form, there are several layers of basically quarter circles with trim added to the back.

The arduino in the skirt allows the LEDs to have several programs that the skirt cycles through every 30 seconds.  The first is a red raindrop effect, the second one is a blue snow shower effect and the last one is a rainbow blinking effect.

In case the videos aren't working, here is a quick picture of pattern 3.

Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch: corset

Normally I prefer to make my own corsets, since they always fit better if they are made specifically to your measurements and bespoke corsets out of my price range.  However, for this outfit, I needed to get the corset done quickly and did not have a pattern than fit the bill. So I bought one cheaply from Corset Story.  Their waist taming corset line allows a 5 inch reduction and are reasonably comfortable.  The one I bought was a white satin one intended for weddings, but I really wanted pink.

The corset satin is polyester, but with the new Idye poly dyes I figured I could get at least a light pink from the white satin.  I did not have a pot big enough to keep the heat high (as per the dye instructions) so I boiled the dye and then poured it into a plastic tub and dropped the corset into the heated dye.  Since the corset would not be in hot dye for the required time,  I bought fuschia dye and hoped for the best. I then swished the corset in the dye until it cooled (about 10 minutes) and rinsed it out with cold water.  The inside of the corset was cotton and turned the same fuschia as advertised.  The outside of the corset turned a pale pink, basically the color of my pointe shoes as a girl. The corset lace did not dye at all evenly, so I bought gross grain ribbon and replaced the lacing. Interestingly, the corset is pretty color fast.  I have worn this corset and danced in it for several hours and it doesn't transfer on to me or onto my white corset liner. 

Once the corset was dyed, I stitched gears all over it and then attacked the corset with rhinestones for bling and little pink skull studs.  I decided to use hot fix stones, which do not recommend...... For one, any small slip with the heated tool melted the polyester satin and there are several burn marks from this. Second, not all of the stones adhered well, so I have to re-glue some of the stones periodically. Third, the tool would periodically get too hot and I would have to stop to cool it down or risk burning my fingers just holding the tool.  Use of E6000 like on the crown would have been better.

However, I am happy with the shiny results.

Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch: crown

I am basing this costume (loosely at least) on the original Glinda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz movie, so I needed a crown.  Looking at images of Glinda the Good Witch showed me that her crown is basically as tall as her head!  So that meant I needed to create a really tall crown pattern.  I basically messed around with butcher paper until I had something I liked. 

I know it is hard to get a guess on size off a picture, but the crown pattern is very tall.  The crown in 6.25 inches tall for the base and 11.5 inches tall to the top of the points.

I am going to apologize now, this next part gave me quite a bit of trouble and I forgot to take pictures of the construction.  Since this is a steampunk rendition, I decided the crown should be made of  metal, and preferably copper or brass colored. I also wanted it to be lightweight so it wouldn't hurt to wear.  I decided to use decorative sheet metal from the hardware store, it has a cloverleaf pattern punched in the sheet metal and a bronze color (link to what I purchased). One thing to note, the bronze color is only on the surface, I found this out when I used a wire brush on my Dremel to clean up the flux from soldering.  Once cut, this sheeting is really easy to shape and bend into the crown shape.  We then soldered the crown closed in the back using a piece of brass to strengthen the crown (this stuff is really really pliable on its own). Since the metal was a bit sharp, I edged the bottom with leather both inside and out.

The leather looked kinda plain, and the original crown is really pretty decorated, so I grabbed some rhinestones and went to town.

Here is the finished crown. The weld in the back is pretty ugly (see the last picture), this stuff was not the easiest to solder. Other than the back seam, I am pretty pleased with the crown, as it is really lightweight and comfortable.   My only concern now is how I will manage to fly with it to the event so I can actually wear it!

Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch Hoop Skirt

My husband and I are planning to attend the Labyrinth Masquerade Ball this year and are in need of costumes.  Since time is short and there is not time to do a completely new costume, I am trying to finish up a costume I started a few years ago, a Steampunk Glinda the Good Witch. This costume was wearable, but very unfinished, so this is a good opportunity to finish it up.


The first issue is that the hoop skirt I originally made for it is 1 inch wide steel bands riveted to leather.  While this is really fun to wear, it wont fit in the suitcase as it doesn't fold or bend at all.

To get a hoop that can fly with me, I purchased a cheap bridal hoop.  This hoop can be folded up to fit in a suitcase, but is made out of something that feels like a cheap tent......

The overskirt to this dress is actually sheer so the hoop will show at least a little bit and I also wanted to be able to wear the hoop without the overskirt.  So I went to the local fabric store and bought some bright pink sheer stripe and iridescent PVC to remake the hoop skirt into something Glinda appropriate.

I made a bunch of strips of the sheer stripe to make ruffles and strips of the PVC to cover the hoops.  The hoops were then suspended from ribbons hung from the waist band. This hoop was pretty simple to make but very very time consuming.  The PVC is absolutely nasty to sew on, it sticks to the foot of my machine.  I have heard there are special feet that can handle this stuff, but none of the ones I have did a good job, so I resorted to the old tried and true method.  I covered the PVC with thin tissue paper, stitched through the tissue paper and then tore it off the seams when finished.