Recently, my son was cast in a production of Mary Poppins. The director wanted to do Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in steampunk fashion, and called on me to create special hats for everyone in the number. So, I set to work creating a pattern, digging through piles of material, and gathering embellishments for what I was sure would be a fun creative process.
First, I started off by determining just how "steampunk" the hats had to be. Steampunk means a lot of things to different people. To some people, putting gears and goggles on anything equals steampunk. For them, that might be fine. To the more hardcore followers of the genre, the embellishments should be functional and/or purposeful. There are a lot of websites you can search to find information about the steampunk genre, and to help you decide how far you want to dive in.
For this particular production, the hats had to have a steampunk appearance, be sturdy to allow for dancing, and very brightly colored. Since they were going to be on stage, they had to really stand out and stay with the color scheme of the costume pieces. In this case, function wasn't really the goal, I just needed and obvious steampunk look. One of the hats does have the capability to function and emit "steam," but I didn't finish it because it was already very heavy to dance in.
Without further ado, here are the pictures of all the hats I made. I wish the photos could convey just how cool they all turned out.
This first hat is the one that will work. Run micro tubing up acrylic pipes. Fill a travel sized hot water bottle with fog machine fog. Drill holes in screw top to fit micro tubing. Coat ends of tubing with sealant and insert into holes in screw top. Watch the fog come up through the tubing.
I'd love to hear your comments or questions!
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