A Steamy Window...

I wrote about My Steampunk Lady a few days ago.  When I made her, I had intended her to be a display in the shop window.  Since we'll be leaving for about two weeks in Tucson, I wanted to make sure that we changed the window before we left.  I wanted to get people's gears turning for the Steampunk Party on February 22nd!

So here is the Steampunk-themed window display at Allegory Gallery and Second Chapter Books.

One of the things that I love about Steampunk is that it is totally a DIYer's genre.  You'd be hard-pressed to walk into a Big Box Store and find something readymade Steampunk... well... at least for the moment, according to THIS article.  Soon we'll be able to stroll into Walmart and pick up gear-studded aviator goggles without having to get our fingers stuck together with Super Glue!

In any event, most of the items from this window are a marriage of Goodwill finds and hardware store retrofitting.  The cabinet is a perfect example.  I found it at Salvation Army for $2.50!  I cleaned it up, removed the innards (it was formerly used to store vinyl records), and painted the doors.  It took awhile to paint all the gears on it, but I think they look quite nice in the metallic gold paint.

Here's a close-up of my sculpture in the window.  I think she looks pretty good.  The sheer drapery in the background looks very theatrical.

Do you see the T-Bar in the window?  That's another example of DIY.  I wanted to make a jewelry display out of copper tubing.  I thought it would really look nice and have a very industrial feel.  The copper would keep it warm in tone and not get too cold and surgical feeling.  The snag came when I dropped by the hardware store and saw just how much it'd cost!  Holy cow it was expensive!  So, I bootlegged the look for less.  I got the copper fittings (like end caps and jointing), but used dowel rods instead.  I had to copper-leaf them and do some creative painting, but I think it looks pretty convincing that it's a totally metal jewelry display.

I think that the window turned out nicely and hopefully it'll inspire folks to participate in the Steampunk Party and give them ideas for costuming and creating their own Victorian-Mechanical-Futuristic-Fusion goodies.