Some more Gen Con Costume time! Wicked Witch of the West Steampunk monkey sculpture

I am a huge Steampunk fan, well your reading Lady Gizmo's Dirigible so you probably already figured that one out.  Since my last long post was about costumes I thought I would follow it up with a tad bit about another Gen Con (gaming convention) costume.  I decided I wanted to be the Wicked Witch of the West, but Steampunk Style!  So I started putting some black clothes together and made a bustled skirt.  I decorated a hat I got from Walgreens.  To make it more Steampunk I added a buckle, black and silver brocade fabric, and tulle.  Below are pictures of my final piece.  I thought it was a lot less cutesy than its original form.

 The second part, which was the most consuming, was to make my flying monkey construct.  I decided to make it out of wire and other parts to give it a steampunk feel.

The first step was to get some wire at the hardware store that was bendable enough but would hold its shape.  I also went up to my craft room and got some thinner picture hanging wire to tie the joints together.  I happen to have a whole box full of Steampunkery so I brought down, a gauge, radio tube,and findings for the eyes.  I also found some plastic floral picks that were suppose to be peacock feathers.  I decided these would work for my monkey's wings.

The most time was spent in this project sculpting the wire frame.  I looked at some pictures of monkeys and flying ones from Oz.  I decided to make the face first.  It is mostly a process of making shapes like ovals to support the body and face.  The legs and tail are twisted wires, which I found to look very Steampunk. The wings were made with a curved wire as the base, at this point I used the floral picks as the feathers and wrapped the wire from the picks around the base wire.

I next spray painted it a brassy color I found at Walmart that was supposed to look like pounded metal.  It looked a lot less shiny and fake than other metallic sprays.  It is a Krylon product.  After doing the spray painting I decided to fill the monkey's skeleton with cotton cloth I had.  I did this because trying to flesh the outside with metal sheets did seem to work.  And without anything filling the skeleton it got lost.  So more spray painting, to coat the cloth. 

Next I added details, these where the little parts I found in my craft room.  I used the radio vacuum tube and gauge together to make it look steam powered.  I gave it its eyes and used a metal circle with a chain on it as a monocle.  On the top of its head I glued a mini top hat I had made earlier.  This will be covered in my next post.

Here is the final piece:

I learned a lot about wire sculptures in this process.  First you should have the proper tools, wire cutter, pliers, etc.  Second it takes plenty of time and patience.