Flame Colored Gown

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This skirt is not intended to conform to the realities of fabric. Paperdolls 1, real life 0.

In any case, it reminds me of poor damned Linnetta, possibly because of the pale vermilion and sunburst yellow. (How impossible is that dress, too? Paperdolls 2, real life 0. Still one of my favorites, improbable or no.) In my imagination, she and her sisters are still bound to the Devil, and he’s never short of jobs for them. She can wear this, then, but I doubt it would give her much pleasure anymore.

Oops! I forgot to note down the colors I used for today’s dress, and yesterday’s too, and now the pencils are all put away… Let’s see — black, pale vermilion, poppy red, sunburst yellow, yellowed orange, cream, non-photo blue, Copenhagen blue, dark umber, bronze. I think. Forgive me, I am still out of practice…

Mermaid Monday #19: Black And White Mermaid

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I don’t know about you, but I am tremendously sick of wedding dresses. That’s one of the two problems I have when I do theme weeks: first, I get sick of the subject, second, I feel like I want to make every day better than the one before. It’s not necessarily a good combination. I do feel, though, like I’ve got the desire to play around with the white gel pen out of my system, though. I haven’t even been able to bring myself to finish the veil from Friday’s, and I missed a day for the first time since I started again, because I wasn’t feeling well Saturday. Well, this week, there will be color! Lots of color! But for today, a replacement black-and-white mermaid outfit. So let us say instead, there will be color! lots of color! tomorrow! Or color this and post it yourself, and you can provide me with color for a day.

It does occur to me that this style of top works rather poorly on this doll shape if you actually cut it out… I’m sorry, I don’t have time to try to fix it tonight. I’ll think about it a little more, though.

One benefit of the theme weeks is that I do enjoy putting up the polls afterward…

Mermaid Monday #18: Red Tattered Mermaid Wedding Dress for a Land Wedding

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For obvious reasons, mermaids prefer thin, delicate fabrics for their undersea fashion statements. These are usually just in single layers, possibly two or three extremely light layers for special occasions or if your situation in life is such that you don’t have to move around too much; anything beyond that registers less as sumptuous and more as vulgar and ridiculous, if not simply dangerous. There is a mermaid fable, in the Aesop vein, about a particularly vain young thing with a pearly pink tail and a fondness for adornment. Despite the warnings of her more practical sisters, she kept adding layer after layer of richly embroidered skirts and tops and sleeves, as well as bangles and necklaces and hair ornaments; in the end her outfit becomes just too heavy and billowy to swim properly in, and she gets eaten by a shark. But then, there is also a mermaid fairy tale about a vain young thing with a pearly blue tail, who starts out with too many layers and sheds them, one by one, to give to others in need; in proper fairy tale fashion, the recipients repay her kindness later on. (From the mermaid point of view, neither story is a caution against vanity per se: the latter is about generosity, the former merely about self-preservation.)

This sleek, light aesthetic often carries over to what mermaids might wear on land. As a matter of fact, most mermaids mentally class humans with other mammals such as dolphins, so it’s only natural to them to consider themselves superior in every way. Because of this perspective, mermaids tend to consider their own style to be obviously better than the fuller, often gaudier fashions popular among human women. Still, sometimes even for a mermaid it’s fun to pile on the fabric. This bride wanted most elements of mermaid wedding gown design for her own dress: the traditional red, the romantic tatters, the bare midriff that would shock most human brides. Indeed the top is such a common design for mermaid wedding outfits that it’s rather cliché. But now that she doesn’t have to worry about sharks, she wanted a skirt with something like ten layers of fabric. The resulting creation looks odd to both human and mermaid eyes alike: the mermaids criticize the mismatch of tatters and heavy skirt, while the humans scorn just about every other part of it. But the bride and her partner adore it, and they’ve never quite been known for paying undue attention to the opinions of others.

The tatters are a long-standing symbol of enduring, patient love among mermaids (and someday, remind me, I’ll tell you the story that most mermaids know a version of that started the trend). Of course, to humans, it just looks ragged and ridiculous. The tailor of this particular outfit took one last look at her beautifully balanced layers of fabric, then actually curled up in a corner of a different room and cried while her apprentice “distressed” the edges.

Retro Yellow and Black Ms. Pac-Man Dress with Fruit Pattern and Pink Bow

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My beloved husband Brian requested a dress based on Ms. Pac-Man, and because I so often dismiss his ideas for paper doll outfits in a rather cursory fashion (and you would too, if you heard them) I thought it would be nice to indulge him a little.

We used to spend a lot of time at an arcade called Pinball Pete’s, back when we were in college and I lived on that side of Ann Arbor. Brian was pretty good at Ms. Pac-Man, and I liked to watch him escape the little ghosts. He was awfully cute when he wasn’t quite fast enough and got caught! He doesn’t play much anymore, now that we are stolid and serious adults (well, really rather that we live on the other side of town now), but you still can’t bring it up without him mentioning that the pretzel is counted as a fruit in Ms. Pac-Man. So of course, the pretzel duly makes its appearance in my dress.

For some reason I felt a sort of retro, fake-50’s feel would suit the theme, but now that the dress is done and I have no intention whatsoever of starting over, I wonder if perhaps an 80’s theme would have been better? Pretzel-covered leg-warmers? … Yeah, maybe not.

No one has quite won the contest yet… Just be glad I didn’t ask for the year, too!
What day is my wedding anniversary?
Post your guess in the comments! Again, the rules:
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter.
2) One guess per person per day.
3) If no one gets the exact date by 9:00 PM EST, June 9th, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) I’ll give one hint each day the contest goes on.
– Yesterday’s hint: It was in the summer.
- Today’s hint: The day is an odd number.

Colored Ruqun in Green, Blue and Yellow

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Ophelia won my last contest by guessing that I had 400 colored pencils, which was the closest guess to the actual number of 403. She picked the ruqun and said, “I loved the movie Mulan when i was little, so what about a Mulan inspired dress? Mulan wears a different style of ruqun in the movie, so it won’t be the same, but what about the same colors; light green for the top and dark, almost midnight blue for the skirt, maybe navy or red for the sash.”

I added some detail, because I just can’t help myself, and Ophelia, I hope you don’t mind the little addition of the dragon… my mom wanted a dragon on this one, and it is certainly very hard to say no to my mom! Anyways, I hope you like it.

I like doing contests, because it’s fun to color according to someone else’s wishes every so often… I have to think of other kinds of contests to run. I was thinking I would ask “How many colored pencils did I just order?” (because I’m down to my last colorless blender… time for an infusion) but now I am bored of colored pencil counting. Anyone have any suggestions for me?

Black and White Ruqun

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Despite the fact that I think they’re gorgeous, I know hardly anything about traditional Chinese clothes, so I was glad when I was finally able to put a name to this kind of outfit — a ruqun! I’ve seen it before many times, but never knew what it was called. I don’t think I got the sleeves quite right, but it is a first attempt…

No one has the answer to my question yet. I guess the good part is, the eventual winner now has one more black and white outfit to choose from…

Question: How many Prismacolor pencils do I own as of May 18th?
This includes the ones that I use, all the stubby little pencils that are too short for my current sharpener but I just can’t toss, all the ones I have in reserve and my set of Verithin pencils I hardly ever use.

Just to restate the rules:
1) It’s a new year, so even if you’ve already won one, feel free to guess again.
2) One guess per person per post.
3) If no one gets the exact number by noon EST, May 25th, I’ll pick the closest guess.

Also, I’m putting up a new poll, just to satisfy my own curiosity…

Mermaid Monday #14: Purple Water Iris Mermaid with Yellow Tail

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So yesterday was Mother’s Day, and then I go and disappoint my poor mother by deciding to take Sundays off! Well, I couldn’t not do Mermaid Monday, but this one is dedicated to my mom, since she likes irises. (Yes, that’s what those flowers are supposed to be, water irises. You all should see the irises she draws: they are beautiful and look like irises, unlike mine.)

Right now, sadly, I live over 2,000 miles away from my family, but this summer, we’re planning on moving, Prismacolors and cats and all, from Michigan to Washington State where they live. You all should appreciate that, because I have a feeling that once I’m out there, Mom won’t let me get away with any more half-year disappearances! Seriously, though, I will probably end up drawing more because I can get together with her, or my cousin Becky, and just enjoy drawing. So wish me good luck with that, once I get to that point.

Halloween LOTR Costume Series #7: Galadriel's White Layered Gown with Silver Circlet

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I didn’t really intend to return to elves for the last day of this series… I wanted to do an Entwife with an orange blossom theme, but I got started too late and my patience with making a dress out of leaves and bark just ran out. You can always tell when I just want to get done for the day, because the dress will be white. No matter how crazy and detailed it ends up, if it’s white, it usually means I started out in a grumpy mood.

Galadriel doesn’t get a lot of description besides “white,” making her good to paperdoll on a grumpy day. I really rather like how this gown turned out, although if I was to redo it I would probably cut off the gauzy middle layer of material on the sleeves.

That makes my seventh costume for Halloween: a whole week of Lord of the Rings, all finished. Uh, those of you who have followed me for a while (like, for more than a week) may have figured this out already, but it’s slightly rare for me to finish up a project so well and consistently: it’s usually one or the other. (See also my poor dancing princesses…) I’m rather proud of myself. Since I don’t think masquerade gowns are likely to be upset at this late hour, I’m putting up a new poll just to satisfy my own curiosity… It’s rather unfair to pit the black and white elf dress against the others, because I think it’ll be lovely when it’s colored, but oh well.

Sniper Joe Green and Yellow Outfit with Helmet from the Mega Man series

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So today is the other costume day that I promised to my husband – he was starting to offer me money, so I thought that I really had better humor him – and he wanted a Sniper Joe outfit. Apparently Sniper Joe is a Mega Man enemy, a mass-produced Protoman clone. (Brian’s been on a real Protomen kick lately, you see…)

Well, of course I get slightly bored with things like that, so I gave Sniper Joe – let’s call her Sniper Jo – a cute little skirt. Her shield is smaller than it is supposed to be, I think, so let’s pretend she’s an updated model who can take down Mega Man just fine without that clunky big shield, thank you…

So now you have a taste of what this blog would be like if my husband was the artist… Tomorrow, back to cute dresses, I think.

Pink and Yellow Fairy Dress with Purple Corset by Becky

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Today is sort of a guest post! My cousin Becky and I, as I mentioned a couple days before, drew some paperdolls together – she did two, and this is one of them. I love the way the yellow makes the petal skirt look so vibrant, and the detail on the corset top. Yep, my family is cool! Someday I’ll have a paperdoll jam session with my mom, too.

Becky loves her beautiful dresses too, as you see if you look around her deviantart gallery. This one is my favorite, with the gauzy layer on the skirt done so nicely (and the guy’s cloak! Unlike me she can actually draw men) The advantage of paperdolls over everything else, though, is that all I really care about is the outfits! Yep, paperdolls are a superior art form… haha, OK, maybe just for me.