Year: 2008

Halloween Costume Series Day 5: Green Princess Gown with Pink Rose Trim and Gold Lace

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So what if “princess” is possibly the least imaginative costume for anyone past second grade? It’s pretty, and if there’s anything I like in this world it is pretty dresses. I believe, now, that I may be the foremost non-Disney expert on what makes a dress princess-worthy, for these are the kinds of things one thinks about when one draws lots of paper dolls.

I don’t know much about the owner of this dress except that she does like her roses, and I would be surprised if she cultivates them herself as the owner of this pink princess gown does. No, this princess is a bit of a terror, and she insisted that her dress should lend her a sort of mature innocence, that it should be both heavy and light, serious and frilly, and highly becoming to her porcelain complexion and rich brown hair. It it is no coincidence that her dressmaker took a very long vacation after its completion. But this, I think, is not the kind of princess to worry too much about the anguish of such people. I for one hope the dressmaker got far enough away not to hear about the princess saying, at her next ball, “Oh, this old thing? You like it? It’s just an old rag I had lying around in my closet.”

The veil should be cut between the gold part and the white fabric, such that the doll’s head can be slipped through and the gold band goes around the forehead while the veil flutters behind.

Take my new poll:

poll by twiigs.com

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

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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:

poll by twiigs.com

Halloween Costume Series Day 4 / Mermaid Monday #6: Pearl Blue Mermaid Costume with Pearl and Lapis Lazuil Strands and Pink Shells

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You thought I forgot about Mermaid Monday! I never forget about things, I just don’t do them and then become consumed by guilt.

The good thing about my October project is that it’s quite freeing not to worry in the least about what time period something is from or if it’s accurate or realistic. I started sketching for my ghost, ending up with something that looked like a ghostly Juliet (hence the reference in the text) and thought, well, is this OK? Is it like something from that time period? Maybe I’d better look it up… Then I realized it was a costume and I had perfect license not to care. Since with my historical dresses I attempt to stay in the style of the times right down to the year without just copying another dress, it can be difficult to do them properly. This month, I’m winging it! and it’s great!

The bad side is that most of my outfits are costumes in some way anyways, so the energy I don’t devote to thinking “is it accurate?” instead goes to “is it a costume?” There can be no mermaid costume in our world better than the costumes Iris and Sylvia already have access to, since our world does require feet. With imagination, most everything I’ve drawn is a costume already and my October project is redundant. (But fun!)

There are plenty of masquerades in the mermaid world, both among the mermaids and on land with the humans and elves, but the mermaids certainly don’t dress up like mermaids and for any of the others to do so would be in bad taste. No, this costume (really just a hobble skirt with ruffles sewn on the bottom) is most certainly from our world, and since here there are no real mermaids to compare it to it does its job well enough. What do mermaids dress up as for their Halloween, you might wonder? Unsurprisingly, they dress as things that scare them or things they aspire to, although mermaid takes on human culture are becoming popular as well. There are three more Mondays in the month, so we’ll see.

New poll on the 8th! So don’t neglect to take this one…

poll by twiigs.com

Halloween Costume Series Day 3: Fancy Lady Pirate In Red, Black and Gold with Plumed Tricorn Hat

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Reading smalltown mom’s blog has put me in a nautical mood, so…

The most powerful pirates wore whatever they pleased, and that was as much of a sign of their power as the fancy ships or fantastic treasures that they posessed. Among the cabal of the fifty or so most elite of the lords of the sea, it was understood that there was no need for artifice or the peacock-like preening of the lesser pirates; when you were that good at what you did, any excess started to look tacky. Captain Christopher Blood, feared master of the legendary Dreadfall, often wore a simple shirt and trousers and went barefoot, making him look for all the world like a new recruit, while Lady Bethany Star was fond of simple shifts without the slightest bit of embellishment. (Since she loved snow white linen and her clothes were so routinely bloodstained, it was actually more efficient to buy a year’s worth of shifts at once than to add the job of washing them properly to her favorite attendant’s duties.)

It was really only those still trying to make names for themselves who fussed over their buttonholes and silks, donning ropes of trade beads and piling feathers onto their tricorn hats until they looked like they might very well fly off themselves. The poorest of recruits with any ambition at all would soon have at least a snazzy handkerchief to show off, even if the rest of his clothes were castoffs older than he was. Extravagant flamboyancy was the look everyone aimed for, but make the mistake of snickering at a young pirate dandy with his waistcoat so adorned with lace it looked like a skirt and you’d be lucky to get away with interesting designs carved down your back and a majority of your fingers.

My pirate girl, Elaine Morgain, is well on her way up. No ship of her own yet, and not as much jewelry as she would like, but she’s got plans. In the meantime, she’s her current captain’s right hand and the second-best shot among the crew, she’s faced down some tricky situations (the most notable of which was surviving being marooned for a month, then having a delicious revenge a full year later) and she’s gained a reputation in certain circles for charisma, ruthlessness and the devil’s own luck. Not bad, she thinks, for someone who started pirate life with a dress barely patched together and a couple of throwing knives. (And yes, throwing knives have a place on a pirate ship. You have to be extra skilled to use them right, though.)

To cut out the left sleeve, cut around the lace, then put the hand over the skirt; to cut out the hat, cut on the white lines. (It may need to be cut past where I have the lines, though. Call it a guideline.)

Take this week’s poll!

poll by twiigs.com