Steampunk Christmas Ornaments

I've been slightly obsessed with the idea of making steampunk Christmas ornaments for a while now, and have been collecting ideas on my Steampunk Ornament Pinterest Board.   If I didn't already have a Geek/Fandom themed tree, I would do my whole tree in steampunk.  I wish I had the room/money for a second tree, but I decidedly don't.

That doesn't mean I can't add a little steam to my tree.  Here are a few steamy ornament ideas.

Last year, we bought this Nautilus ornament at Hallmark.  I love it.  You might be able to find it for sale used.

I went looking for these awesome octopus ornaments at Pier 1 after seeing them online, but they didn't have them at the store I went to.  I still intend to look elsewhere, but I haven't had a chance.

Just a couple of days ago I found these awesome wooden 3D gear ornament kits by Cogbots.  I ordered several and can't wait to assemble and paint them when they arrive.  They also have several styles of flat wooden gear ornaments as well.

I found this lovely clock or pocket watch ornament at Joann's this year.  You should be able to find it there still.

I also have a few ornaments for sale.  I made some hand-knitted octopus ornaments.  They are up at etsy.

Finally, I was decorating the tree this weekend when suddenly a package of ornamental gears I bought a while ago caught my eye.  I bought them at Michael's a while back.  It's a Michael's brand: Bead Landing Found Objects. They are found in the jewelry section and I believe they come in two sizes.  These are large ones.  I really like them, but I haven't found anything to do with them yet.

Here are all the gears in the package.  I suddenly realized they would look good hanging on the tree.

I thought of a couple of different ways to hang them on the tree.  I first tried using gold metallic embroidery floss to make a string hanger.  I just tied it into a loop and slipped the loop through the holes in the gears.  Luckily all these designs have holes to hang them through, so no drilling required.

I also tried making loops with gold wire.  I wanted to make my loops so that the gear would face out when hung on a limb.  I ended up not liking the way the wire looked as much, because it was more noticeable and also my wire wrapping skills are lacking in neatness.

So I did the rest of them with the embroidery floss.  Here they are.  (It turns out this look neat, but are REALLY hard to photograph when on the tree.  So you get no hanging photos.)  If I was going to do an entire steampunk tree, I'd make a few packages of these.  It's a pretty cheap way to get some steampunk decor going.  They are less than 2" wide, but I actually like smaller ornaments and have a few kinds of mini ornaments on my tree already.

If you want some more steampunk ornament inspiration, I have lots more good pre-made and DIY ornament ideas on my Pinterest.   Epbot (one of my favorite blogs) did a great series of posts last year about steampunk ornaments, along with some tutorials on the subject.


I anyone has pictures or links to other steampunk ornament ideas, please share in the comments!  Merry Steam-mas!