LED Steampunk Aeronaut Costume - Android, Adafruit, FastLED and Steam powered awesomeness

Halloween costume #3: Aeronaut Erin and her magical arduino powered flaming rocket pack.  :)  
Featuring   interactive steampunk goggles, a glowing fairy bottle, my glowing soul caster on my wrist and my "secret of nimh sparkly" necklace, and of course my brand new LED isis wings running FastLED.  

The rocket pack is made out of plastic soda bottles and the aviator cap is made from craft foam.  The goggles change color depending on which way I'm facing and have a pendulum effect that reacts whenever I turn my head.  I'm wearing 4 different arduinos, one accelerometer, one bluetooth module and 5 different batteries, and all together I'm rocking 180 LEDs.

The outfit lasted all night without me having to change a single battery or fix a single flicker.  This is a major accomplishment!!   I am so proud.  :) :) :)  

I LOVE HALLOWEEN SO MUCH.

 

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Steampunk Festival Belt with Pockets - Leather and Embroidery

This upcycled leather Steampunk Festival Belt is really fun.  It's got a steampunk octopus.  Who doesn't love a steampunk octopus?  It also has a steampunk dragonfly on the other side, and tentacles embroidered on the iPhone pocket in the back.   It has magnetic snaps to keep the pocket flaps in place, and zippers inside to keep your stuff in place in case of handstands or sudden drops in airship elevation.

It's made from two colors of leather (upcycled from used leather jackets), a gorgeous coppery fabric, and faux leather for the side pocket flaps.  All the creatures are embroidered on.  For stamina.

I wear one of these every day in lieu of a purse or backpack and I absolutely love it.  It has enough space for my moneys, my lipstick, my business cards, and my phone (fits an iPhone 4 or 5, I haven't tried it with a 6 or an Android phone), with two extra small secret pockets behind the phone pocket for frequent buyer cards and hair ties, or of course, spy documents.

I made this for me, but then realized it isn't .. quite .. me.  It certainly is someone though.  So I'm going to sell it.  It'll fit hip size 35-45 or thereabouts.   I'm asking $150.  Send me an email if you'd like it.

I have listed it on Etsy too.

Pictures!  (click to embiggen)

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Glowing Soulcaster Wristband - Inspired by the Stormlight Archives

I'm listening to the audiobook verion of Stormlight by Brandon Sanderson while working on things, and woke up this morning gripped with the inescapable need for a Soulcaster of my own.

From Wikepedia:

Soulcasting is a practice where objects are changed from one form to another. It has been shown to turn rock into smoke, purify the blood from poisons, and create food, and it has many other uses. Soulcasting is done by means of a device called a soulcaster that is powered by gems imbued with Stormlight. The type of gem placed inside the soulcaster determines what the caster can transform. With each use there is a chance of the gem cracking and being destroyed, especially when a large amount of matter is changed.

I think that sounds like a pretty useful thing to have.

So without further ado, I busted out the big box o' steampunk junk and the soldering iron, pulled out a few neopixels and an arduino micro controller (that's where the magic comes from) and came up with this lovely thing.

It's got three glowing gemstone spheres, set in brass for stability and maximum power transfer.  The straps are soft suede leather and it closes with two ornate brass buttons.  

The gemstones glow quite brightly fading between all the colors in the rainbow.  And of course, when I'm using it to transmute one kind of matter into another, they flash with a searing brightness.  

This thing is delighting me a whole lot.  It's also going to make a fantastic steampunk costume accessory.  What kind of mythical creature might steal and wear a soulcaster?  Are they of use to mermaids or fairies?  Maybe to this Steampunk Fairy.   What would you transmute with your very own soulcaster?

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LED Fairy Lights - Steampunk Costume Accessory and Fairy Room Decor

Wow! So, I've been out of the country, fire dancing at a theme park in Japan, for most of the winter. I'm back now and I got an embroidery machine for Christmas, which I haven't even taken out of the box yet, because of the aforementioned Japan trip.

Just before we left, I made a bunch of gorgeous fairy lights and hung them from my ceiling:

I got some colored bottles and covered them with iridescent cellophane, using mod podge and a heat gun.  I've had the mod podge for EVER and was never quite sure what to do with it.  This was an excellent application, I think.

Then, I took some leather scraps and cut them and tied them around the cellophane-covered bottles.  I filled the first couple of prototype fairy bottles with a battery-operated LED strand with about 8 lights on it.  I pushed the cork in and braided the LED cord in with leather cord wrapped around the neck of the bottle, and now the battery pack can get wrapped around a belt and the fairy bottle dangles from my waist.  It's an incredibly awesome costume accessory!

Here I am sporting 2 fairy bottles at the Dickens Fair with Nick in all his steampunk finery.

The little ones worked so well that I wanted to make some bigger, more permanent ones.  I asked for (and received!) a fantastic strand of multi-color, color changing LEDs for Christmas.  It was a bit of a project, but I made 10 more fairy bottles of varying sizes and colors and soldered together a bunch of lead wire between the LEDs before enclosing the LEDs inside the bottles.  This was a bit of a project - I am not the world's best solder-artist, though I'm probably a bit further up the ranks after doing all those connections.  

At the end of it all, though, my fairy bedroom now sports 10 color-changing LED fairy lights - 4 at the corners of my hanging bed and 6 more around the room.  I even have a remote control to turn them on and off, and to change between the colors.  I can pick one color or get them to softly cycle through the rainbow.  

There will be more LED projects in the future!  LEDs are neat.  :)

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Steampunk Fleece Jacket - Men's M/L

It's done!  It's done at long last.  Steampunk-inspired stuff sure is labor-intensive.  It's all about the details.

This is a Marino Gray fleece Steampunk Jacket.  It's not so steamy that it can't be worn with regular clothes, but the cut and the details invoke the Steampunk aesthetic.  I've been wanting to do a steampunk style hoodie for a long time, and this is my first foray into the genre.. so it's not "over the top" but I really do love how it turned out.

The buttons at the breast and collar are gorgeous metal coat-of-arms style, and there's a chain linking across the front and the sleeve.  It also has subtle metal gears on the front left, and a handy sleeve pocket as well as two regular pockets.  The spiral embroidery motif is worked in shiny copper thread, and just picks up the light in a fairly subtle way.  I used a shiny gold metal zipper on this one as well.

It's a men's size 40, which is a teensy bit small on my hubby, so I'm in search of a model... so let me know if you wanna try it on and let me take pictures of you in it.

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Edwardian Ball in San Francisco - Circus and Costumes

Saturday night, my hubby and I got dressed up and went to the Edwardian Ball in San Francisco.  I've heard about this event for years & years and I've never made it before.. it was absolutely delightful (if a bit too crowded).  If I do it again next year, I am getting there much earlier.

But Oh! the costumes!  And the circus acts!!  We managed to find all the people I knew for sure were going, plus bump into a couple more we didn't expect.  It was one of those places, though, where every single person you see looks almost exactly like someone you used to know, or should know, or met once at a party.  Everyone was eye-catching.  In my costume I fit in perfectly, but did not stand out.  I'll get more extreme and wacky next year.. I like to be on the line between fitting in and standing out.  :)

To that end, I spent a huge amount of time shopping in the vendor's hall, and acquired my first bustle.  It LIGHTS UP!!  It's red and gold and poofy and it lights up with little red lights.  It was made by Katherine the Great at Blue Moon Designs .. she had SO much gorgeous stuff.  Actually, everyone had so much gorgeous stuff! 

The whole experience got me ruminating.  Upstairs, amazing and inspiring circus performers.  Downstairs, amazing and inspiring fashionistas.  If I were going to participate in this event next year, would I rather be upstairs?  Or downstairs?

His hat has a hat!

Immediately I answered "upstairs!  on the stage!!"... but as I thought about it more, and truly explored my heart for the answer, the quieter voice inside me whispered, "downstairs.. with the costumers.. watching people try on things I made." 

This is significant.  Of course, I LOVE performing, love being on stage.. but this is the first time that I've presented myself with that kind of choice and felt like I was 51% on the "downstairs" side and just 49% on the "upstairs" side.  I really, REALLY love costumes.  Maybe I feel like after 10 years of being a full-time performer, I'm ready to start making a change? 

This gives me a little hope for the future.  Being a performer, well, has an early retirement age.  I've probably got another 10 years in me, if I'm careful and wear sunscreen and do a lot of yoga.. but not much more than that, at least, for the super active circus stuff.  But if my passion migrates over to costuming.. well, I can do that for the rest of my life.  Until this week it's always felt like an inevitable concession.. eventually I'd "have to give up" performing and "fall back" on sewing.  This week was the first time I've ever made the voluntary choice to choose sewing over performing.

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Steampunk Rocket Pack!

Rocket pack!  Steampunk Rocket Pack!  I am the proud creator of this fine little piece of machinery and I can't wait to start flying around the neighborhood.

Materials:  

Ocean Spray Grape Juice bottle

2 funky shaped water bottles from Safeway

Shiny Spray paint

Elastic for straps

Random springs & screws from the garage

Drip watering manifold & hoses from the garage

Grommets & gears & rivets & hot glue & epoxy

Assembly:

Spray paint the bottles.  Glue them together.  Glue stuff on.  Stick the straps on with tape or cut slits in the bottles and slip them through.  FLY.

I'll figure out the rest of the costume and helmet, and then take better pictures, but I'm just so EXCITED that I had to post these cheesy phone snaps.  :)  Enjoy!

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