Building the Steampunk Ball Decorations

YuKonstruct was invited by the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous Society to build the decorations for the 2016 Steampunk Ball.

While we helped with decorations last year by laser cutting cardboard gears, this year was a whole different story; we were given free reign and a large budget to spend on making décor for the ball. To fit with the “Around the World” Rendezvous theme, our decorations were inspired by steampunk travel.

Volunteers from the Yukon Comic Culture Society and Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous Society collaborated with YuKonstruct members to design and build a large airship, jacob’s ladder, compass rose, porthole photobooth backdrop and steampunk aviators to decorate the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre.

The large props, like the airship and compass rose, were first designed in 3 dimensions in SketchUp. The designs were then converted into pieces that could be cut out on the laser cutter and CNC using the CorelDRAW and Aspire software. Different materials were used for the different props: the porthole was entirely made of lightweight foam, whereas the compass rose and airship were built from different thicknesses of plywood. Chris Lloyd designed the airship and porthole, and Logan Sherk, our facilities manager, designed the steampunk compass rose. Logan also did all the design and build work for the impressive jacob’s ladder.

Once all the pieces were cut out, they were assembled and painted by an incredible team of volunteers. In total, 21 volunteers helped bring it all together!

YuKonstruct would like to thank the amazing volunteers from the Yukon Comic Culture Society for helping build the props, the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous Society for giving us the opportunity to do this fun community project and the staff at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre for doing the installation and takedown.