Summer Steampunk Suitcase Challenge

It all starts with a suitcase.

Any time I go yard-saling, there seems to be one item each weekend that pops up in lots of different yards. Like it's calling to me. This particular weekend, early in the year, we seemed to find curious, old, worn-out suitcases at many of the sales. So the first summer's challenge popped into my head and my son and I ran with it:

That summer, my son and I spent the weekends scouring sales for parts. We found our suitcases first, then as the pits and pieces of inner-workings were gathered, the inspiration grew and we somehow found out -- not any kind of plan, really at first -- what it was we were building. Mine was a fairy-catching camera. I called it a "Monoscopic Pixie Revaporator". And I have to admit, I loved every bit of it:

It was so much fun finding all of the buttons and knobs. The mason-jar "light" on the spool on the right was filled with glow-stick necklaces. The lantern on the top left held  pixie that you could barely see flying around through the translucent paper. On the bottom right is the camera (attached with a metal coil to the rest of the machine). In that camera's housing, I was able to put my cell phone and it played a constant loop of the fairy flying around to some chiming music (that was obviously coming from the fairy itself). In other parts of the machine were blinking lights and photos taken of pixies -- as evidence of the successful craftsmanship of this machine. :)

When the Suitcase unveiling day arrived, we were thrilled that a good handful of friends actually participated -- in person and via some online photos and videos. My son created and presented his "Teleportation-by-Steam" suitcase. Here are a few of my favorites:

And all of our guests came up with other really creative ideas for their suitcases:

And now we leave it to you: host your own event and see if you can get others to join you for an art reception before school starts back up -- and really encourage the adults to do their own, not doing one for their kids! It's more fun that way. We gave out little trophies at the end of the event (everyone got one) with things like "Most Magniloquent", "Most Hypergolic" and "Most Brimborion" written on them -- in keeping with the steampunk theme, of course.

Post your pictures in the comments, I want to see what you come up with! I actually sold my suitcase the next year at our own yardsale. I put it out there without a price on it -- just needing to get rid of it -- and was offered $30 by a woman who appreciated the art and wanted it as a toy for her kids. Haha, perfect!