In Bruges Set

Halley DeVestern recommended I check out this set from the movie In Bruges, of a shabby opulent gun dealer's home.



I agree, it's great in it's cluttered, antiqued, fabulous look!

Amanda's Before & After

Remember Amanda's living room? The one I brainstormed a "makeover" of? Well, Amanda's finished it now (as much as any room is every done), and she has done an incredible job.

Here's what it looked like "before"


And here's some "afters"




One of the best things she did -- I don't think I would have been this brave -- was to paint the floors. Dark.
Before:


After:
Such a big, dramatic change.

Good job, Amanda! If you want to find out more, she has a lot of posts about the process -- including her very tight budget -- here.

Dennis Slootweg Furniture

Allison sent me the following:

The Storque describes this furniture as looking "as though it was rescued from the rusty depths of a long-since-sunken submarine".

Pretty cool stuff by Dennis Slootweg:

http://www.dennisslootweg.nl/en/work.html

And, indeed, it is very cool furniture:

Can't you see this lit up for a steampunk ball?

He calls these rust cupboards. Charming...

Me, I think these would fit in a rusty, bucket of bolts spaceship, cruising the stars while experiencing swashbuckling adventures and engaging in barely legal but morally upright shenanigans.

The ModVic House

Bruce and Melanie Rosenbaum -- also known as ModVic -- have not only created the most steampunked house ever, they are also opening it up for tours as part of the Sharon, Massachusetts Old House Tour on May 2nd.

Here's a sneak peak of the house -- there are many more images, projects, and how-tos at the online property showcase and the ModVic site.

The Kitchen

The Stove -- but wait!

The stove is modernized with a drop-in Miele stovetop!

The office

The Media Room -- I love the stained glass windows as wall art and the muted browns and greens.

The workroom (yes, there's a workroom & an office!)

ModVic is also sponsoring a Steapunk Form and Function Design Competition, with entrants exhibited at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham MA from October 22, 2010 to May 10, 2011. Pretty neat!

Springtime Finds from Restoration Hardware

Restoration Hardware has an incredible set of steampunk worthy pieces this spring.

by saracarl

(So many the easiest way to show you all of them was in this kaboodle slide show -- click through if you want links...)

Steampunk Chic Gaming Tables

If you game -- and there are lots of awesome looking steampunk themed RPGs out there -- check out what Laurie just sent me:

I was at PAX East this past weekend, and this company was displaying their amazing gaming tables. These tables are so amazing in person, the illustrations on their website just don't do them justice. Here's another site with a better pic, and this site gives a video tour of the booth at PAX. The Sultan table is particularly steamy. I don't even play tabletop games, but after seeing the Sultan I wanted to start just so I'd have an excuse to buy one.
Hope you enjoy!
Laurie
Autobiography of Craft

Victorian Women Naturalists, enshrined in wallpaper

Shall we continue on the theme of Victorian women scientists for a moment?

Allison sent me to the wallpaper collection by Grow House Grow based on Victorian women naturalists:

And while discoveries by men such as Darwin and Newton have made them household names, there are countless others whose scholarly work has been lost, forgotten or even usurped by other intellectuals. Our Spring 2010 wallpaper line highlights three such individuals, all of whom are women, whose phenomenal academic stories have fallen between the cracks of history.

As female scientists in the nineteenth century, these women faced an oxymoronic distinction that their male counterparts eluded. Sexist barriers discouraged most young girls from the pursuit of an intellectual calling, yet our subjects persevered by challenging the status quo and developing their own route to recognized scholastic excellence. Each woman was largely self taught, and relied almost entirely on an innate passion for her respective field--something that makes their achievements all the more remarkable. Our bonnet is off to these unsung scientific heroines!

Ms. Treat, whose love of carnivorous botanicals influenced Darwin's work, has a luscious wall of Pitcher Plants and mischievous Venus Flytraps (and perhaps an ant or two).

Ms. Ward, who developed her passion for microscopy by magnifying and drawing bugs, blends late-Georgian silhouettes with a curious menagerie of over-sized insects.

Mme. Jeanne, a French dressmaker-cum-Sicilian naturalist (and who invented the world's first aquarium), has her love of the sea reflected in an elegant, ascending mollusk scallop.