Halloween Costume Series Day 18: Evil Queen in Purple, Green and Silver Gown with Ruby Necklace

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Apologies for not putting up one yesterday, our internet connection gave out…

So I sketched this one out thinking “evil queen.” I drew it thinking “evil queen.” I was filling in the pattern on the poison-green dress with glee thinking “totally evil queen, heh heh heh.” And then my husband comes along and says, “ooh, it’s very oceany.”

No, I say, it’s “evil-y.”

“Oceany,” he says. “Like an ocean queen or something.”

So I put the vote to you, paperdoll fans. Who’s right?

By the way, cut a line right down the middle of the collar to make it fit the doll. I didn’t add something indicating that on the doll, sorry!

Halloween Costume Series Day 16: Black Velvet Cat Costume with Keyhole Neckline and Green Belled Collar

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I haven’t had a real femme fatale this Halloween, so this black cat costume turned out a little bit short. Brian thinks her collar and shoes are catnip colored, but I just like gree//////////////////////////////loooooooo[

CAT LIKE TYPING DETECTED

Halloween Costume Series Day 8: Cleopatra White Linen Egyptian Dress with Blue Lotus Pattern, with Jeweled Collar and Red Sash

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I kind of broke my “no research all month” rule for this one, but it is not hard for me to find an excuse to look at ancient Egyptian clothes. This one is vaguely accurate, although I think the lotus pattern may be over the top, there’s no melting perfume cone and the clothes should be sheer anyways, for full royal style. That’s even further than today’s ’sexy Cleopatra’ revelers want to go… I used to want to be an Egyptologist, and I’ve even got a book or two on learning hieroglyphs in the other room. Then I discovered Japanese and kanji. No kidding.

If you’ve already taken my poll and answered “obscure costumes,” can you leave a comment and tell me what kinds of costumes you’re talking about? I’m very curious now, since that category’s done so well. I expected that sexy costumes would be low on the list for this crowd, but I wasn’t expecting that no one would choose ‘pop culture’ for a costume. What, no Jedis in this group? No Jokers? I thought everyone wanted to be the Joker this year…

Two Halloween Costumes (Princess and Cat) from Liana's Paperdoll Boutique

Click for the doll.

So, I do all my drawings with Prismacolor colored pencils, and I almost always use a special pencil called the colorless blender for the finishing touch. Essentially it smooths the colors together; sometimes it makes the colors vibrant, sometimes it makes color gradients look perfect, sometimes it actually changes the colors. It’s what makes mermaid tails so pretty, basically. And mine wore down to a little pencil stub, and I thought I had a replacement but I don’t. (I think I need to start buying them by the bushel.) So for tonight I’m just going to put up some more Boutique costumes and tomorrow go and get another blender pencil or two so I can continue the paperdoll outfit I was working on. Anyways, here we have a princess costume and a cat costume. Tonight’s costume was to be a princess gown, actually, but then I ran out of colorless blender… look forwards to it tomorrow!

I made a new poll:

Cindy McCain's Yellow Shirtdress from the 2008 Republican National Convention

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I started this dress over three times and still got the collar so very wrong. Really a shame, since that’s the thing everyone remembers about the dress (or at least, any Daily Show fans) but I don’t really want to redraw it. Anyways, this is the outfit that Cindy McCain wore on one of the days of the Republican National Convention, the one that Vanity Fair said was supposedly $300,000 — that is, $3,000 for the dress plus Vanity Fair’s estimation of how much the accessories cost, which also assumes they’re right about the diamonds. This dress took a while to grow on me, being as how I thought it looked like a raincoat with an unfortunate collar at first, but now I rather like it. Too many accessories, though, with the diamond earrings and all those pearls and three military-themed pins and one big watch. (Although, if I owned those pearls, I’d probably wear them 24/7, so…)

By the way, my October project — I can’t keep a secret — is to try to draw one Halloween costume each day of October. So, start thinking about what you’d like to see, because I will be considering requests over the month!

And don’t forget to vote…