Steampunk Aviator Decorations

YuKonstruct and the Yukon Comic Culture Society were invited to make the decorations for the 2016 Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous Steampunk Ball this past February. As the theme for Rendezvous was "Around the World" we decided to go with a steampunk travel theme for all the decorations.

Inspired by images of how the Victorians predicted the future would look, one of our projects was making small scale people on flying machines. We affectionately referred to these decorations as the creepy flying babies.

YuKonstruct is the first makerspace in Canada's north. Our mission is to provide access to shared space, quality tools, available expertise, and a collaborative environment to help makers build anything!

The materials for this project were generously provided by the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous Society.

To build the little people we started by making the basic skeleton out of clothes hanger wire.

The wire was taped together with masking tape and then the shape of the bodies was built up with packing paper and plastic bags.

Old tights and socks were used to cover the head, arms and legs, and then the bodies were dressed in baby clothes.

After the bodies were done, we dressed them up in steampunk fashions and added the flying machines.

Wings were made by laser cutting wood frames and gluing on beige card stock. The wings were wired to the bodies and we added a loop of wire on the back to be able to hang our aviators over the dance floor.

To cover the faces, we gave our little people steampunk goggles made from bottle caps, and respirator masks. All the accessories were glued in place with a hot glue gun.

We added little battery powered lights to the wings to complete the look.