Steampunk Style

If you follow trends, you've probably heard about Steampunk style. At least in the DIY community, it seems to be all the rage. Threadbanger just did a series of video podcasts on it, there are hundreds of pages of results if you search etsy for "steampunk", and I have to admit...I'm intrigued. So intrigued that I bought a lot of little gears and things on etsy, hoping to incorporate them into something, maybe a series of resin pendants? (The coolest steampunk fashions I've seen have gears in them.) But that seems obvious somehow, so I'm still trying to decide how to use them. In the meantime, I decided to learn more about steampunk, since all I knew was that it's a cool looking style for jewelry that involves gears. Well - it turns out there is WAY more to it than that. Apparently, it's a "futuristic Victorian" thing. And there are people so obsessed with it that they "live" virtually in a whole steampunk community in that obsessive online game/social network called second life. Seeing that my interest in steampunk is mainly the fashion, accessories in particular, I was excited when I found this series of blog posts by a jewelry designer all about steampunk. Exactly the steampunk resource I was looking for! If you are curious, go check it out - lots of information, and she also shares about her design process in making ceramic beads with a steampunk theme.