The Optometrist's Topper

Perhaps my silliest project yet (even sillier than clockwork squids), I put this new topper for sale at Atelier this evening. I'm not sure where the inspiration for it came from - a monchrome striped topper with lenses and aparatus from the optometrist profession - but I am hoping it will do well, even though it was pure indulgence to build.

The actual hat has been ready for some time, but there was a fanciful twelve verse tale of how the hat ended up in my shop to write, and then a little Punch and Judy-esque device to construct that enables people to view and read the accompanying poem. It's all filled a space in the ground floor at Atelier very well.

Happy Birthday Mr Tesla!

Today is Mr Tesla's 153rd birthday! And also one year since I commemorated his birth with the Tesla Topper, still one of my favourite creations. This year I decided to make a nice little freebie to match the Topper which I know so many of my group members purchased. And so here we have ... the 'I <3 Tesla' brooch!

More info on Tesla at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

The Edison gets an outing

I was very pleased to be able to don the new Edison topper this weekend at the New Babbage Illusions White Themed ball. For the rest of my outfit, I decided the emphasis should be rather more on the punk than the steam. So it was on with the Panjen glamgoth skin, white Kin freebie hair, tattered Ghost dress, and Tesla white framed sunglasses. 

I really like to accessorise steampunk outfits with sunglasses. It always brings to mind that surreal scene in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, where Mrs Lovett is daydreaming about an idyllic day out at the beach, herself and Mr Todd eccentrically dressed in bathers and round framed sunglasses. I love a hint of surreal modernity in period costumes.

And the perfect finishing touch to this pale melée? 

A white boa - of the constrictor variety naturally!

Wearable albino boa constrictor, with blinking eyes and flicking tongue, by Meissa Thorne. 

My black wooly shrug - a new and inseparable favourite item - 

a Curio Obscura freebie, just the back and upper arms worn!

 Me and Tyger on the steps at Piermont Landing during the ball.

The Edison Topper

This week, my dear friend Miss Breezy Carver sent me a request for a new summer hat. She's been wearing my Tesla Topper all winter, and I've been so pleased to see her in it in a number of snaps on the New Babbage Ning. Her request was to have a Tesla Topper but in white. However, rather than re-hash the Tesla Topper, I asked Breezy if there were any other inventors she would like to personify in top hat form. She gave me some suggestions, and so, the next day I began work on a new Tribute Topper devoted to the work of Mr Thomas Edison.

The hat itself is made of a silvery white damask, with a smoky lace band, with a tiny detailed rendition of Mr Edison's incandescent lamp glowing on the brim. With the addition of some vintage electrical flex, three copper buttons and a flourish of copper fuse wire, the new hat was complete!

I gave the hat to Breezy today and she was delighted, and, I too am very pleased to have a brand new Tribute Topper in the collection at Atelier.

Above, Breezy in her new summer topper, plus, Mr Thomas Edison, and his incandescent lamp: In 1879, using low current electricity, a carbonized filament and a vacuum sealed globe, Thomas Edison first produced a reliable and long lasting light source.

On the topic of topiary

Today the good people of Babbage (and some bad ones too) headed to Miss Llewellyn's wonderful garden for a May Day celebration. The green fingered among us, myself included, entered an inspired building competition with a topiary theme. To my delight, I came joint third place with Miss Blakopal. Here I am with some of the entries.

First place saw a battleship in bush form, that fires apples and has flowers in place of steam, by Mr Cleanslate. Second came Miss Andrew's fairy globe, and third, Miss Blakopal's lovely twirly conifer with lantern. I must also mention Miss Writer's alphabetty plant, and Miss Frye's glorious airship battle tree.

My leafy offering came in the form of a macabre little fellow, having recently beheaded his dear wife with the garden shears. This bizarre image came to me last week, and I quickly scribbled it down on paper before I started work with prims. Here is my sketch, the end result was very similar! I have Tyger to thank for the name 'A bush with death', but of course, only my nonsensical pen is to blame for the accompanying rhyme.

Bunnykins, the Easter Rabbit

Bunnykins was meant to be a kind of grungy, dishevelled, forlorn looking creature, but, even though he has drawing pin eyes, and his limbs are only just staying on, he still ended up looking terribly cute. I gave him as an Easter gift to all the Atelier Eccentrics today, on top of a brown felt top hat. He has a dirty calico body, grubby flower fabric lined ears and paws, and pink sculpty buttons. Of course, a snowy-white fluffy tail finishes him off.

His faded pastel colours put me in mind of an outfit I made long ago, and had quite forgotten about, but since it is Easter, I dug it out from the back of my wardrobe. Here I am with our giant brown bunny from HPMD, in a nubbly knitted waistcoat with Victorian miniature portrait buttons, a pink floral ditsy blouse, and foxglove print, mustard skirt. 

Too many Easter eggs, too early in the day, have a lot to answer for.

The March Shadowbox

The shadowbox for March is now on the wall at Atelier, since it's late again, I'll keep it out for most of April too.

For a March theme, I had to include a March Hare, and have had the main picture for this shadowbox in mind for a long time. Of course, a March hare theme would not be complete without one of  Tenniel's Alice in Wonderland woodcuts, the March Hare here seen dunking the poor dormouse into the pot. I also added a woodcut I found of the Vernal Equinox, which occurs on the 21st, the image here representing the equal hours of sunlight and darkness at this time. The bronze Roman coin, is a symbol of 'The ides of March', the name for the 15th March in the Roman Calendar. The term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was assassinated, as dramatized in Shakespeare's play, and the coin was commissioned by assassin Brutus after Caesar's death. Two green porcelain hare-shaped buttons and a bottle of pussy willow buds bring the nature theme back into focus, and a line from an ode by Victorian poet Algernon C. Swinburne, on a stained and torn scrap of paper, sum up the madness and chaos of the season.

"March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms 

that enkindle the season they smite."

Algernon C. Swinburne, March: An Ode