A Very Steampunk Christmas – Trimming Your Tree

If you are at all like us you probably have lots of bits and bobs lying around just waiting to be turned into something. Well, stop looking at that pile of awesome as a millstone around your neck and give these shiny pieces a new life this holiday season! With a little wire wrapping, ribbon tying, and a few metal hooks you could have your very own Steampunk Holiday Tree!!

For us, space is a premium in the workshop so we opted for a small 4 foot table top tree that we picked up at a craft store for $40. It is made of Rice paper wrapped wire and already has the lights as part of the limbs. Yay! No messy wiring to wrangle!! It was a Victorian tradition to put actual candles on your tree, but that is kind of dangerous and the Fire Marshall most definitely frowns upon danger so our modern version of this suits us just fine.

We have quite a selection of skeleton keys, brass filigrees, vintage brooches, old necklaces, chain, and little things that mean something to us that we have gathered along our journey in this big, bad world. So, why not put them to use and decorate our tree? It really is that simple!

A few other ideas for you include:

1. Top Hat/ Mini Top Hat Tree Topper – Use a paper tube and a piece of stiff cardboard cut town to the size of the interior of your hat to hold it in place and avoid getting tree sap on your lovely stuff (if you have the luxury of a real tree). If you don’t have a Top Hat, this is a great excuse to finally get one!

2. Fabric Scraps and Ribbon – We know you have some of this lying around! Cut small triangles and sew them to the ribbon to make a flag garland.

3. Vintage Costume Jewelry – clip and drape brooches and necklaces on your tree to add some sparkle. Or treat yourself to that necklace or bracelet you’ve been coveting and use it decorate your tree as well.

4. Skeleton Keys – Use ribbon scraps or ornament hooks to hang these on your tree.

5. Chandelier Crystals – These usually already have a bent metal hook at the top so you can just hang them throughout your tree for added bling!

6. Brass Filigrees – Have a few extra you haven’t turned into jewelry yet? String them on ribbon and turn them into ornaments.

7. Vacuum Tubes – These may require some wire-wrapping skills to turn into ornaments but will look retro-cool hanging on your tree!

8. Gears – We have some larger ones that look pretty awesome suspended from wire ornament hooks. You can get some now for decorations and use them in projects later – perfect!

9. Nautical Themed Pendants – mini portholes, tiny diving helmets, little spy glasses, clinometers, compasses – all these make great ornaments as well as jewelry pendants, and their brassy goodness gives your tree a distinctively Steampunk feel.

10. Treasured Trinkets – have a tchotcky from a lovely vacation? a little toy from your childhood? Something odd your grandma left you? Wrap it in wire, tie a ribbon around, somehow get it on your tree and be reminded of the valuable memories the little things embody!

Take back the holidays and make them your own again. Remember what you loved about them as a child, and blend that with what you love now. Share what you love with others. It was a Victorian tradition to hide presents IN the tree, so adding some of the maker supplies the Steampunker in your life is wishing for this year is totally traditional in a non-traditional way!

In Loving Memory of Anne McCaffrey

When I heard the news of the death of Anne McCaffrey – science-fiction author and creator of the Dragonriders of Pern series, the Ship Who Sang, and the Crystal Singer series, among others – I cried. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting the woman, but she was indubitably my hero. When I was about 13, I stumbled upon Anne McCaffrey’s novel Dragon Song in the local library. I was hooked. Over the following years, I sought out everything she had written and devoured it. Ms. McCaffrey’s  ability to create a complete world in which you could completely lose yourself was incredible. I know I’m not the only person who, to this day, desperately wishes to own her very own fire lizard!

Besides being incredibly gifted at world building, what stands out most to me about Anne McCaffrey’s stories is what she did for women in science fiction. For the first time in my life, I was reading fantasy/sci-fi stories in which females were the undisputed MAIN characters. At the time, most of the classic stories I had been exposed to had been written by men and featured male protagonists and women and girls were little more than window dressing or plot devices, but Ms. McCaffrey put forward leading females who were real and strong, gritty and vulnerable and flawed. And I mean these women were FLAWED; they were damaged goods, emotionally and physically. Just like all those girls and women who read her stories and saw themselves in her characters, these women fought and scrapped and overcame. At the impressionable age at which I discovered her novels and short stories, the idea that a woman could go through hell, deal with her baggage, and still win the day was a revelation to me. This idea has embedded itself deep in my psyche and informs by personal worldview every day.

Thank you, Anne McCaffrey, for all the ways you’ve touched my life. Fly far and free on dragon’s wings.

-K of the frenzygals

A Very Steampunk Christmas: Holiday Wreath

If you love the look of Steampunk, the holiday season is a great time to express your fondness for the aesthetic with the abundance of gorgeous golds, coppers, and browns in holiday decor. We decided to make our own decorations this year and started with a festive wreath for the door to our workshop.

Using a basic wire wreath frame ($4), 2 dozen floral picks of various shades of bronzes and browns (approx. $25), 5 yards of copper colored satin ribbon ($3), some floral wire (free, because we had tons), some screws and nuts ($2), and a special piece we added at the last minute (also free because we already owned it), we built a lovely Steampunk-inspired door decoration.

M used pieces of the floral wire to wire the floral picks to the wreath frame, then wrapped the frame with the ribbon to hide the ugly wire stems. Then we cannibalized our old convention sign to use the real brass porthole as the centerpiece. We had to go buy new screws so they were long enough to go through the porthole, the wreath, and the foam core board backer from the sign used to hold the porthole in place. Yes, that is our bathtub dirigible logo layered inside the porthole!

Bloomer Candy Company – Hard-Working Chocolate for Hard-Working People

There are many things people get excited about when the holidays come around each year. For some it is the snowball fights, for others the smell of pine trees in the living room, for me it is the heightened availability of Bloomer Candies’ Vanilla Cream Peanut Clusters.

It is no secret that I love candy. K once said, “If you are what you eat, someday you are going to turn into a Gingerbread man!” I like many kinds of candy but one of my favorite favorites are these delicious vanilla cream and peanut confections coated in delicious milk chocolate! They aren’t readily available the rest of the year and I judge the start of the holiday season by the appearance of the display stack at the grocery store. They used to come in pint containers that looked like ice cream pints, but this year they are in a cardboard box like fine pastries.

I am not a fan of caramel clusters because I hate getting the caramel stuck in my teeth (especially when I had braces), and because they are often too sweet and give me the “sugar shivers”. The vanilla cream peanut clusters by Bloomer Candies are just the right amount of sugar rush without the sticky mess. I just love them! They are made with all natural ingredients and no preservatives. They make their candies in small batches using the same family recipes used since the Civil War.

One of the things that makes me happiest about buying these every year is knowing I am supporting a small, family-owned, Ohio-based business that takes pride in its products and honors the traditions that were started when the company was founded in 1879, 100 years before I was even born.

To learn more about the Bloomer Candy Company, visit their website, where you can order your own and find your very own favorite… oh, and support American workers at an American company, making an American product.

- M of the frenzygals

Book Review: A Steampunk Maker Primer

Book Review: Steampunk Gear, Gadgets, and Gizmos: A Maker’s Guide to Creating Modern Artifacts by Thomas Willeford

M does the heavy lifting in terms of writing our blogs, but K insisted on poking in for a bit to write this book review.

Now, before I get started, in the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that Thomas Willeford of Brute Force Studios is one of our favorite people. He is a sweet, kind, funny, intelligent, talented, gruff old goat, and he’s our kind of crazy. If you are unfamiliar with his name, don’t be surprised if you are familiar with his work. You know that arm that Nathan Fillion wore at the end of the steampunk episode of “Castle” ? Yeah, Thomas made that. Thomas’s work has been featured in several compendia about steampunk art and accessories, he has been a featured guest at several steampunk (and general fandom) conventions, and he has contributed designs to Alchemy Gothic.

Now, having said all these wonderful things, I should point out that they have no bearing whatsoever on our review of this book.

Steampunk Gear, Gadgets, and Gizmos: A Maker’s Guide to Creating Modern Artifacts is far and away the best DIY maker book I’ve ever read. I mean that in all sincerity. I am an avid reader and collector of all books relating to making. I’ve got books on assemblage, mixed media, paper crafting, jewelry arts, metalworking, leatherworking, and just about everything else you can image. Most of the time, these books show artistic photos of beautiful projects and give either super simplistic instructions for making simple projects, or they show artistic photos of beautiful projects and give detailed instructions assuming that you already have experience with advanced techniques. But this book – Steampunk Gear, Gadgets, and Gizmos – covers a lot of advanced projects with simple, straightforward directions for every single step. With this book, you will be walked through measuring, cutting, sawing, drilling, punching, sanding, riveting, and more. You will use metal, plastic, leather, wood, and glass. There are no shortcuts to making the glorious projects in these pages, but when you are finished, you will have steampunk accessories that you can be proud of.

We highly recommend that you pick up a copy of his book and that you follow Thomas on Facebook at his fan page.

Brute Force Studios: http://www.bruteforceleather.com