The Making of SteamPoe!


I’m back from an incredibly busy Halloween season! As if the whole ASOIAF shebang (DIY Iron Throne, DIY wildling cloak and all) weren’t enough to tide me over, I had two other Halloween parties lined up! One was my younger cousin’s birthday party (wherein we created a haunted house and scared the wits out of a bunch of high schoolers!) a couple Saturdays ago, and the other was something we’d been planning for over five months: SteamPoe, the Flips Flipping Pages (post) Halloween party, which was just last Saturday!

I’m one of the three organizers of SteamPoe (the other two being my cousin Dianne and our fellow Flipper and new partner-in-(crafting)crime Shani), and none of us remember exactly how the idea came about, but the title was coined because the theme was a mix of steampunk and, in the spirit of Halloween, Edgar Allan Poe.

The Briggy board. JDV

Up until September we were looking for a venue, because obviously, the Zeppelin room of Salon de Ning was way out of our league (but so pretty!), and we discovered Briggy after our September book discussion (“It Must Have Been Something I Ate” by Jeffrey Steingarten, moderated by the lovely Joko at Poco Deli) after the restaurants along Kapitolyo were one by one closing down on us. We stumbled into a late-night poetry reading in session in Briggy, talked to the owner, and so Briggy it was. We loved the lighting and the interior panelling matched our theme, but Briggy Hall (as in “Barangay Hall”) is a unique community cafe that launches startup food entrepreneurs.

So anyway, in the past couple of weeks, Dianne, Shani and I have been busy with party prep: ocular inspection / food tasting, and loads of crafting: from costumes to decor to the giveaways. Thank goodness for long weekends!

Costume tryouts. LOL.

Shani and I working on our costumes. DSS

On the eve of the party, we even had an all-nighter: a crafting pre-party! A shoutout to Mike and Jeeves for helping us out and keeping us company!

Our table full of supplies, from many a National Book Store / Ace Hardware / Divisoria raid. DSS

I made the bookmarks for the loot bags, Shani and Jeeves made the keychain.

Shani added Aromateria soap (absinthe!) to the loot bags! DSS

We also made mustachioed pencils! Tee hee! DSS

Dianne made the Poe wreath (you’ll see it later on), a cask of Amontillado, and her gas mask. DSS

We then hunkered down to make steampunk goggles (paint, paint again, then embellish!). DSS

I slept for less than an hour, long after the sun was up!

The day of the party, the very punctual Flippers started streaming in while we were decorating!

I was working on the blackboard! JDV

Steampunk specs and goggles! RDJ

The masque(s) of Red Death, and other freaky faces. JDV

SteamPoe! RDJ

The Poe altar. JDV

Victorian graveyard by FFP founder Gege Sugue. JDV

“The Raven” also by Gege. JDV

The party was a roaring success (squee!), but I’ll have to save that for another blog entry — I haven’t completely caught up on my sleep yet. But in my next post: a steampunk cast of characters (costumes! costumes!), a scavenger hunt, a wicked poetry slam, and other Steampoe shenanigans!

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Photo credits: thank you so much to Flippers Rhett de Jesus, Jeeves de Veyra and Dianne Singson for the photos used in this post!

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