Ok, so I have heard some arguments recently that Steampunk is falling out of favor. I'm still seeing enough interest to disagree, and honestly it is enough fun that regardless of overall popularity I think we are going to have people continuing to make things, celebrate the genre and generally keep it alive

So if you are tempted to tilt into the world of Victorian Steam and weird tech, where should you start? Well, same with any costume, you need an idea. Just vaguely trying wandering through Steampunk attire can certainly give you some ideas. You can hit a search for Steampunk on ebay for a few things, but my first suggestion on where to start would be Etsy. Try a search for steamteam in particular, or just click the link.

This particular group is a great place to start looking for straight ideas. They have a rich community of people making everything from jewelry, to masks to the ever classic brass goggles.

Speaking of brass goggles? See what the Brass Goggles blog is talking about today and over the last several weeks. This is a great blog featuring artists, cool mods and other things.

If you want to take a different approach, start looking at non-steampunk costume ideas and then add steampunk elements to it. For example, check out the steampunk lightsaber this guy did. Add some goggles, maybe a duster and you have a very steampunk leaned costume. The same concept can be applied to a lot of other costumes. Vampire hunters, mad scientists, etc.

Of course, the classic Victorian styled costumes with a touch of steam and weird? That's another fun place to start. Add some gears, gogggles, or other strangeness to up the ante of the outfit.

Halloween is closing in. Are you the type to whip up your own costume, or do you want to just order it and be done? Jump back to the ideas section and there are some great resources for places to buy pre-built items. If you know what you want, it just makes searching for the items easier. But what if you are looking to make it yourself? Fear not, there are resources for you too!

One great place to start is Instrucrables.com. Instructables is a specific home for how-to guides. They have a few different ideas on goggles as well as other oddities you could use to help build out a costume.

There was also a great set of video tutorials on ThreadBanger recently when they did a steampunk week. Just do a search up in the right corner for steampunk and pull up videos from that.

Also, if you can't quite figure something out, Etsy has a great Alchemy site that lets you request a custom item. Check it out.

And of course, you can always just google for tutorials on the specific steampunk modifications that you are interested in making. There are plenty of forums and other ideas lurking out there.