Having discovered the wonderfulness that is steampunk, I am attempting to embark on my first steamy project, a wind-up penguin toy. The plan is to assemble the penguin out of bits of metal for the body (I think I saw some in our garage XD ) with copper wiring around it. I have some small metal heart-shapes I broke off a necklace chain that I might be able to use for the beak and a large washer that I hope to be able to make a head out of. The wind up mechanism will control the fins (if I can figure out how to attach and make them working) or will just wheel around as the wind-up I intend to use comes pre-equipped with wheels. The wind-up itself I am stealing from an old Disney princess toy (which ever one has a pink dress on).

The hardest part so far is getting her open. The mechanism is hiding in her rather voluminous skirts, held together by an annoyingly triangular screw, so I'm having to brute-force my way into her skirt (creating an opportunity for plenty of off-color jokes). I've tried getting in by ripping her torso off, which resulted in a rather funny picture of her and Prince charming that I'm considering posting ("Whoops" "They did tell her she looked like she could break in half, why didn't she listen!"). So tomorrow when people aren't asleep in my house, I plan to break her skirt in half, hopefully not damaging the Wind-up.