a very steampunk halloween

Look, it's already November 5 (happy Guy Fawkes Day), and I still haven't posted about my Halloween crafting endeavors. A pox upon me, and all that.

I was invited to two parties this year: Val and Roger Smith's (haunted manor theme, with a lot of really kick-ass decor; you can read about it here), and Tony and Kara Moore's (for The Walking Dead premiere, an AMC show based on a graphic novel that Tony illustrates!). Zach suggested that we go as steampunks; I thought that was a swell idea. I set about doing some research, and found an entire fascinating world of Victorian costumery, various cogs and clock parts, homemade goggles, corsets and ray guns. I had fun assembling these costumes.



My costume consisted of:

• 1 black corduroy skirt: $2, from the thrift store
  
• 1 puffy-sleeve, turquoise silk shirt: $30 (it was my big splurge)
• 1 buttoned, tailored vest: already owned
• 1 pair of black slouchy boots: borrowed from Rachael
• 1 pair of black lace stockings: $10
• 1 pair of steampunk goggles: I crafted these from a $4 pair of lenses found in silvercrow's shop on Etsy, some copper shaping wire and an old purse strap
• 1 pair of corseted fingerless gloves: I made these from a pattern from Sweet Mama, Small Sugar, and some Malabrigo that I had leftover from my Hawthorne shawl. I searched high and low for velvet ribbon and finally found some at Hobby Lobby. The buttons, which are tarnished and very steampunk, also came from Hobby Lobby.

Zach's costume required a lot less shopping:

• 1 pair of khaki cargo pants: already owned
• 1 camel-colored wool jacket: already owned
• 1 white dress shirt: already owned
• 1 buttoned vest: $1.50, from the thrift store. It was much larger when we bought it, so I took it in about 1" on each side.
• 1 pair of cowboy boots: already owned, believe it or not.
• 1 driving cap: already owned
  
• 1 pair of steampunk goggles: These I had to jerry-rig a bit more vigorously. I used this tutorial on Instructables to make the lenses from two large plastic bottle caps, some clear, hard plastic from a container, and the other old purse strap I had lying around. The original tutorial called for mutilating a baseball and spray painting the resulting pieces. However, the spray paint didn't adhere, making this step an epic fail, and I had to scramble to figure out the logistics from there. Let's just say I had a lot of old purses I had planned on giving to Goodwill, and they are now all cut up and trashed. The end result required copious amounts of Gorilla Glue, and I wasn't quite happy with them, but oh well.
  

In short, Halloween was a blast, and I think we looked pretty damn good, too.