Steampunk Style

This is us in our costumes in our front yard. Oh how I love our trees!

Nathan recently asked me on a date to a steam punk show. 

I had no idea what 'steam punk' meant, but loved the idea of going anywhere in costume, 

so I eagerly accepted the proposal.

After trying to figure out what I had agreed to, my enthusiasm grew.

For a few date nights before the event, we visited thrift stores together. Scouring racks of clothing in search of perfect costume pieces was a fun adventure I really relished. I love hunting for a bargain, and I love creating costumes. 

We found everything we needed except the extra accessories Nathan made himself. (I did alter my brown skirt by gathering the hemline to give it that lovely scalloped look so common in the Victorian era.)

My favorite purchase by far was Nathan's brown frock coat. Ten dollars, baby!

The best part of the costume was Nathan's crafted accessories.

Nathan cut sheet metal and riveted it together to create a solid metal top hat. He spray painted it with 'hammered copper' paint and covered the sharp edges with black screening tubing, so the brim had a nice finished edge. He riveted on a copper band for a hat band and added two large springs with gears in the place of hat feathers (I don't think you can see those in the picture. Maybe I'll post a better pic of the hat later. Tutorial, anyone?)

He also fashioned a monocle (instead of the overly common steam punk goggles) and attached it to the underside of his hat brim with a reclaimed hard drive magnet. He fitted it with green LEDS that lit up a dial that was etched into the glass. It gave him an intriguing, slightly robotic look.

His last accessory was a walking stick with dancing LEDs in the handle. He used PVC pipe and sprayed it with our copper spray paint (everyone was convinced it was a copper pipe. The paint is awesome!) and added some real copper accents, then attached a metal head with a little button he could push and made the lights begin glowing and blinking. 

It was so fun, and throughout the event random people kept asking Nathan to pose in pictures with them. Other people didn't want to ask for a picture, so there were lots of quick shots taken on people's phones. We found some of those posted online the next day.

Our good friends the Kimballs joined us for the day. Check out their costumes:

They score way more 'awesome' points than me- Julie actually sewed their costumes!

Don't they look great?

We browsed lots of little shops filled with steam punk paraphernalia and accessories, then played a demo of a role-playing game with a steam punk theme. 

While we waited for the show to begin, we people-watched and admired the unique (and sometimes bizarre) costumes we saw. We played a game making up colorful histories for each person, trying to explain why they wore each item of their costume. It was actually really fun and we created some really funny stories. It was so tempting to write some of them down. 

After watching an interesting performance of a fictional face-off between Nikola Tessla and Thomas Edison, we headed out for dinner.

Have you ever eaten out dressed in costume? 

Oh it's so fun! We had lots of great stares as we entered. 

  

In closing, here is a Daguerreotype version of our steam punk portrait. 

It was a memorable date night for sure! 
So much more fun than dinner and a movie.