Month: November 2008

Mermaid Monday #8: Black-Tailed Treasure Hunter Mermaid

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Now, tail color for a mermaid isn’t destiny any more than hair color is for humans, but there is something about black tails and treasure hunting that seem to go together, and it does make for more efficient camouflage than shiny gold generally does. Treasure hunters often end up being flashier than their gold-tailed friends when they’re not on the job, showing off their most recent finds and piercing their fins, but it’s hard to begrudge them any of their triumphs since they don’t tend to live out their natural lifespans.

This treasure hunter loves flashy clothes and heavy jewelry when she’s not exploring, but on the job she has a lot to carry and consider, so she dresses for speed (although she can’t quite let go of her lucky fin piercing) and comfort. She also has a small shovel in her backpack and carries a trident to help fend off sharks. She might look a little gloomy to those of us who associate black with death, but mermaids think of green as the color of death, since they fancy that the bubbles that mermaids turn into have an iridescent green tinge.

The Good Queen continues to triumph…

poll by twiigs.com

Liz Patterson’s Final Wedding Dress with Teal and Lavender Roses from For Better or For Worse

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Since my 1940s wedding dress attached to a rant on For Better or For Worse is one of the more popular dresses on the blog, I feel like I should bring the saga to a close. Dee ended up altering the supposedly sixty-something-year old dress into something reasonably modern, the Ghost of Grandma made up for fanciful logic on the part of the cartoonist, the flowers were hideous and Liz ended up marrying that creep. All the way up until the vows were said I was hoping Liz would come to her senses, but immediately after that scene I was so over the whole thing, as evidenced by my putting off the dress for four months. If the end of the saga was boring its weird rebirth is mind-numbingly dreary, although sometimes I visit the Foobiverse!’s Journal out of nostalgia and their second-hand psychoanalysis of Lynn is amusing at times. I still follow Foob’s Paradise, though, which is a webcomic that continues the Pattersons’ adult lives.

Since I get so many search queries related to weddings, I’m thinking of doing some sort of “wedding week” perhaps, maybe after Christmas. If you have any pictures of wedding dresses you just love, feel free to post links in the comments so I can get inspired!

The Good Queen is so far holding her own over the other dead queen and the rest of her competitors. She would say that’s only the way things should be, but it’s not over yet. I will do a bonus costume or two for whoever wins, so if you adore one of them get your vote in, send your friends over, post to your weblog and beg your readers to vote for your favorite!

poll by twiigs.com

White Gown and Corset with Peach Embroidered Inset from Taylor Swift’s Love Story

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Now I don’t really listen to country music, possibly because I fear being disowned by my dad, who says if he starts to listen to it of his own volition, we will all know he’s gone senile. Still, when Janel wrote about a beautiful dress that she was helping a young friend reproduce, it was almost a foregone conclusion that it’d end up on my blog, even if it did come from a country music song. It’s called Love Story by Taylor Swift, and I think it’s a lovely music video even if I am getting teased by Brian about it.

Since she spends almost all her time in this dress standing behind a balcony, and because I’m watching the video on YouTube, I can’t really tell how the skirt looks; the corset should be about right, but the skirt is more of a guess. From this photo it seems to have some interesting construction going on, but that’s just about the only picture I can find with the full skirt. (The arial view in the video doesn’t count, but it does give away that there is a longer train on the real thing than on the paperdoll. Unfortunately, while her costume designers likely have access to yards and yards of fabric, a proper train would have run off the side of my paper. Paper Dolls 1, Real Life 1.) Should anyone else wish to reference it, I used these two pictures when drawing the corset.

There’s been a tremendous amount of interest in this dress, so I wanted to add two things: One, I’m definitely not the designer — that would be Sandi Spika. Two, Janel wrote a FAQ on the Love Story dress that answers questions about the dress and is very helpful to anyone wanting one for themselves.

I’m glad there’s no clear winner in the poll yet, it makes the Grand Halloween Showdown so much more fun…

poll by twiigs.com

Bella Swan’s Hyacinth Blue Prom Dress from Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

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So I read Twilight a while back, after reading about how it was the hot new thing for starry-eyed young girls and their unappreciated mothers. (I had to go through a waiting list of about 114 people for it, too.) I admit that I enjoyed it, in the same way I’ll admit to liking Naruto — it’s definitely shallow, artless wish-fulfillment, but that straightforwardness in and of itself makes it rather sweet. Also, Edward reminds me of Brian in one respect, in that he’s always teasing me about something or another. Beyond that the comparisons are few, but between me and Bella, I’ve got the better guy.

The criticisms of the book depicting really lousy relationship behaviors as desirable, Bella and Edward being Mary Sue characters (e.g. entirely perfect — clumsiness is not a character flaw, thank you), Bella being a moron (I don’t agree with that one, I felt like she was depicted as a book-smart, classics-reading, aloof old soul) and so forth have been addressed at length elsewhere, I’m sure, so I’ll stick to what I know — what? no good dress descriptions? Bella is always wearing things like jeans and flannel, or a brown turtleneck or some such monstrosity. What’s the fun of a proper vampire romance if you’re wearing flannel? The only fancy dress she gets comes in at the end, and isn’t very well described besides being hyacinth blue and off the shoulder. On Stephenie Myers’ website is a cut first draft of the dressing for prom scene, in which the dress gets a little more attention. It wouldn’t work for my paperdolls since I don’t do see-through fabric (so Sylvia and Iris, as well as any other skin colors I draw, can both wear anything), but even if I did, even after much musing on the relevant paragraph, I’m not sure quite what to make of the description. Mostly I’m stuck on the sash at the waist, which is “paled-flowered, hyacinth fabric, that pleated together to form a thin ruffle down the left side” and then goes on to be long at the back and open at the front. Rosalie calls it haute couture, and given that a lot of haute couture is a little beyond me too, maybe the problem is on my side after all. But anyways, that dress is merely from the first draft; I decided on my own version for the paperdoll. For that is the appeal, after all, to put yourself in the heroine’s shoes and stunning gown, imagining yourself the target of slavish devotion from the perfect man. I like it that way, because a quick search through DeviantArt will show as many Bella prom dresses as there are Twilight fanartists, all the way from “her dad wouldn’t let her out of the house wearing that” to full-on medieval princess. Even the movie’s version looks nothing like the others. Me, I envisioned the dress as somewhere between a 1950s party dress and something out of Gone With The Wind, and so that’s what we have here.

I probably won’t go see the movie – I’ve got enough vampirism in my own house.

Anyways! I think the last two polls are pretty clearly over, so let’s start the Grand Halloween Showdown!

poll by twiigs.com