steampunk

so some of my friends had a steampunk party the other night. steampunk is one of those things that you've either never, ever heard of or you're fairly familiar with it. so for those of you who have never heard of it before, this should get you started. i find it to be a fun and rather fascinating concept, so i was pretty excited about getting to dress up for the party. but due to a lack of time and funds to create an awesome outfit, i had to make due with what i had. i had a few things here and there that i thought would contribute to the general feel...but it was still lacking the one major thing to really tie it all together and make it stand out as distinctly steampunk. i had some great ideas, but again, had neither the time or money to bring them into actuality. thankfully, i was talking with one of my good friends (cl) the night before the party and through our conversations we were able to come up with something that would be cheap, easy to make, and would definitely make the outfit stand out. so charged with my mission, i left for walmart. it was late, but that was part of the fun. my friend stayed on the phone throughout the entirety of my trek, so she was privy to somewhat unique play-by-plays of my wanderings up and down the aisles of walmart. the desired supplies were as follows:







eyepatch









washer









gold/brass thumbtacs









red thread









brass furniture nails



the next morning, i got to work. first, i bent the washer so that it was as close to the contour of the eyepatch as possible. then i started sewing the washer in place with the red thread.




it doesn't look very pretty, but hey...it's close enough for rock and roll. besides, i just needed it to be good enough to somewhat keep the washer in place during the next steps.


once the washer was in place, i put a brass furninture nail in the middle. then i started surrounding the washer with the thumbtacs. the thumbtacs took up the majority of the eyepatch, and then i placed a few furniture nails along the edge.








this is the finished product








it turned out looking a little rough. i wasn't exactly sure how it would go over. but when i put it on, it looked pretty intense


it definitely brought the outfit together, although it did end up making me look a little like a cyborg pirate. but who's to say that wasn't fitting with the steampunk theme. anywho, the eyepatch was actually a pretty big hit among everyone there. and it was really fun to see what everyone came up with for their outfits. so here are just a few pics of the night's steampunkery. oh, and one final note...i never realized just how important peripheral vision is. i'd say covering an eye takes away more than half of one's vision. seriously...it took me a little while to get used to navigating with this thing on. but i eventually got the hang of it.