Custom Flask Holsters

Check out the new flask holster:



The same camp mate from our GSC who supplied the color copies for the banners that I shared in the last post about Flipside, a regional burn in Texas, also decided to gift our camp members each their own hip flasks.  When he mentioned his plan to me, I thought it was a great idea.  Sounded fitting.  I mean, we're gonna need something to transport our personal supply of the multitude of yummy liquor concoctions around with us while off adventuring.  But, he almost nixed the idea when it was found to be too costly to have the flasks engraved or otherwise personalized for the camp.

I thought...hmmm...the Mod Podge transferring was so much fun. Let's try some flask holsters with some smaller images on the front!  Working with what I had on hand, a couple more color copies and a little help from the family we assembled 25 of these, which cost about $1 each in supplies to make.  After punching lots of hole; attaching a few strips of elastic band with a handful of rivets, staining with shoe polish; and sewing the backs on, we have these:






To wear it, the holster slides onto a belt through the slits on the back.  The flask slips in/out pretty easily when needed.  Though, when these were passed out at camp, I noticed that many of our camp mates have exceptionally wide belts that they ended up just sliding between the flask and leather backing of the holster.  One member even slipped her phone in front of the flask.  Cleverly inventive gypsies!

I went through a few different prototypes before I was satisfied.  My original design was all one piece folded around the bottom of the flask with lacing on the sides.   I'd also intended to use some scrap canvas instead of the leather as you can see the start of here:
 


But, the leather and elastic looked and functioned much better.  And, surprisingly, the image transferred much cleaner, too.  The transferred image seems to be staying on the leather quite well.  I made a sample and put it through some abuse with water and stretching.  It held up great.  But, we'll have to wait and see how well they hold up over time and heavy use. But, they seem like they'll do just fine.  Who knew transferring with Mod Podge actually worked really well on leather!  How cool! 

The best part was that our camp members seemed very please with their gifts.  And that made me a "happy camper".  :)    Next up, I should be posting about making your own inexpensive goggles out of stuff from around the house.  Should be interesting to the DIY steampunk'er in some of us, I hope.

DIY Low Cost Banners

We just attended our second regional burn event, called Flipside, over this past Memorial Day weekend. (These regional events were created after the original Burning Man event in Black Rock City, Nevada.)  With around 2500 people, it was lots of fun even in the almost unbearable Texas heat.  You may be asking, "What is a burn event?".  If so, I'll get to that later in this post.  I have a feeling it's going to be a long explanation.  :)  But, the main point right now is that we got to camp again for three nights in our "Yurtle" with our themed camp, "Gypsy Steam Circus".

In planning for the event, I wanted to make some signage for our camp that we were sorta lacking at Myschievia, our 1st burn back in Oct.  Voila!  This is what I came up with:





I'll explain how I made them in a moment.  Now, for explaining what a "burn" is for those not "in the know".  Being so many things to so many people, it's difficult to define. But it's partly about "radical self reliance", artistic expression and being a part of a unique temporary community.  I think it's best described as a temporary escape from and letting go of the "real" worlds daily stresses to live ever so briefly in the moment.  Probably the toughest concept for most attendees to get their heads around is that at these events you are not allowed to sell/barter ANYTHING.  The only thing you may purchase there is ice.  You have to bring enough supplies to survive for what could be up to 6 days.  And, if you bring it in, you have to take it back out with you, including trash (well, minus what you deposit in the port-o-potties).  No commercialism or capitalism from the outside world is allowed.  Everything is on a volunteer basis.  Even safety and maintenance people are volunteers.  They refer to what is created as a "gift economy".  Everyone chips in their part to help out.  And, everyone seems to have something unique and wonderful to offer whether it be food, drink, clothing, art or entertainment.  These smaller regional burns may not have the population or number of art installations of the big one (at 20,000+ attendees), but it was still amazing.  What we think makes it so special is all the many themed camps that gift out their own specialties to attendees.  Some of our favorites were the dance floors, arts/craft stations, breakfast and probably best of all hair washings.  There was even homemade popsicles in odd flavors such as Bloody Mary (with stuffed olives), Pickle Juice, and Cantaloupe.   Honestly, with all the camps serving food and drink to try, we brought way too much for ourselves and our camp!


Our own camp's main contribution was to serve some of our members' specialty homemade alcoholic beverages such as "Gypsy Potion", Mead, "Johny Jump Up", "Apple pie" and Skittles Rum among other mixed drinks from our two bars.  We all took turns manning the bars just as the sun started to go down each night.  Before the event, some of our camp member got together and made the pair of terrific portable bars that were painted with circusy red/white stripes. We also had scheduled events throughout the weekend such as a steampunk gadget workshop, glam station with costume trunk free to all, and and an impromptu iced water gun shootout.  I was blown away by all the individual talents each of our more than 25 members brought to our camp.  We even had an abundance of fire spinners/eaters, belly dancers, jugglers, hoopers, drummers...really...you name it.

With a group this large, we needed a presence.  We looked into having banners printed, but it was pretty costly.  We had planned for a few banners at about 2x3 ft for our bar area, which would have cost us well more than $50 a banner.  Yikes!  My brain got to working and I figured we could make them a LOT cheaper.



I decided to use old bed sheets for our banners.  I found a few for a $1 a set at the thrift store.  I ripped to size, hemmed, and primed them with latex interior paint.   My original idea was to just paint the designs by hand, but that was going to be way too time consuming.  So, I opted for a different  quicker solution.

Now, I've transferred images with nail polish remover before.  I may have mentioned this in many previous posts including the spellbook here. But, I kept seeing posts on other craft sites and blogs about using Mod Podge or gel medium, that stuff for decoupage. My original thought was just to transfer my b/w laser copies to the sheet to be painted in with color.  But, low and behold, I found out one of our camp mates works for a copy center!  Ho ho!  I had access to cheap color copies!  Yay!  I sent them files that were tiled to fit on 11x17-sized paper that I could tape together before transferring.  The important part, that I almost forgot, was that I needed the image to be a mirror of the original to be legible when I was done.

So, after I primed the sheets and trimmed/taped my backward tiled image together, I glued it to the primed banner face down.  Now you're probably thinking, "What?!  You just screwed up you banner, man! You glued it face down?!".  Or, maybe not.  Anyway, this IS what you're supposed do.  Once it dried, we got to work dampening the paper and rubbing it off gently so that only the image was left on the banner.  Pretty cool, huh?!  Yeah, I thought so.  Plus, another camp mate was also a graphic designer and came up with another banner design, which we also transferred:



They were really fun and kinda stress-relieving to make.  :)  It took a few attempts to get all the paper off.  And, some of the image did come off with it giving it a very old and weathered look.  Though, after a few banners, we realized that rubbing with the grain of the paper helped to get it off cleaner while removing less image.  When finished, I sealed the image with more Mod Podge and then a coat of waterbase indoor/outdoor polyurethane varnish.  Here's a cost break down:

One twin bedsheet $.50
One Gallon Indoor Latex Paint (clearance) $9
Paint Brush/Roller (on hand)
Tape (on hand)
22 11x17 color copies (gifted) but would be about $11
8 oz. Mod Podge Gloss (with coupon) $3
8 oz. Waterbase Polyurethane Varnish (clearance) $4
12 1" Grommets  (dollar store, not shown in the pics $1
TOTAL COST for two 2x3 ft and one sign 1.5x4.5 ft = about $30

WAY cheaper than the printed banners, right?!  And, I've probably got enough left over to make a few more, which I was going to make until all the costuming and another project stole my attention and time.  I'll tell you more about that in my next post, shortly.

DIY "Upcycled" Costume Medals

This past week I've been working on some more medals for my Major General Steampunk Character (cuz you can never have too many, right?).  I've shared a few back when I posted about them on my jacket here. Just had to revisit these.  It's too much fun rummaging through my junk jewelry stash for this.  Here are some of my favorites so far:



These are pretty simple to put together.  The funnest part is finding the faux medals in the form of old necklace pendants, earrings, keychains and other odd junk.   The ribbon portion is made with 1 1/2" wide scraps of grosgrain ribbon (mostly from old hatbands and dress ties my daughter discards).  I colored a few ribbons (like the 2nd one in the bottom row) with permanent marker just to give them a bit of variety. To attach the medals to the ribbon, I made my jump rings from scrap wire or salvaged them old jewelry.  A marker barrel works well for wrapping the jump rings on.   



And now for the backs, which I'm most proud of.  The photo just above is a comparison of the back of an old marching band medal I purchased at the flea market  (left) and my homemade version (right).  So professional looking, right?  ;)  I took care to make my ribbons sturdier like these band medals. I'll tell you why...



Another pic of the backs.  Originally, I was just going to just glue the ribbon down over the pin backs, but I prefer to avoid using glue whenever I can.  I've seen some medals on Etsy.com and other site where they just hot glued the pin backs on.  From my own experience, I KNOW that won't hold up long.  So, I'll share the secret with you, in case you want to make some.



I used the leftover aluminum from the bottle used on my monocle here to secure the ribbon to the pin backs, but any thin copper, brass, tin metal scraps could work.  The bottle is a really thick aluminum (not the type used in the ordinary beverage cans).  To tell you how thick it is, I have to use pliers to bend a sharp corner on it.

• I cut 2 pieces of the aluminum just short (8th of an inch) of the width of the ribbon.  One is about 7/16th" long and the other 3/4".  
• I used a vise to bend the edges on the 3/4" piece into a bracket, "]", shape so that the length is now at 1/2".  
• Then, I punched holes in the smaller piece with a nail punch and inserted the pin back into it. 
• To attach the ribbon, I wrap the edges of the ribbon over the wider piece of aluminum.  The smaller piece sorta snaps or slides into the wider one with the ribbon trapped under it.  
• I use some pliers to smash the edges of the wider piece down over the smaller one til it's nice and tight. 

They go together practically in seconds.



So, all in all, these were made with all "upcycled" parts.  Didn't have to purchase anything.  LOVE projects like that. Don't you?  These would be great to make if you belong to a steampunk airship or other group that wants to identify themselves.  Medals can be made of just about anything you can imagine.  I plan to make some more until I either run out of aluminum or jewelry parts.  I also plan to make a sash to wear some of these on for the Steampunk Invasion at Scarborough Ren Faire the last weekend of April.  Though, I'm sure many of these medals will have to stay home.  :)

I still plan to post more about the progress on the "bustle bar" here in the near future.  Just have to get some good pics.  I'll try to get some while at Scarby.  So, stay tuned for more costuming posts.