March and May Birthday Gowns from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

Click for the doll.

For those of you who haven’t been following my site for a couple of years (or a decade, depending on how you look at it), allow me to explain why today’s dresses seem rather different from usual: they’re from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique, which was my first paper doll-centric website. I drew outfits for it from December 1998, my sophomore year of high school, to May 2000, partially through my first year of college. It’s no longer online in its entirety, but from time to time I’ll put up some of the old content as filler for anyone with an interest in how my drawing skills developed, and it’s also a thrill to hear from people who followed the old site from time to time.

I’m not sure why it seemed like a good idea in the first place. I had been drawing paperdolls for my own amusement for a few years beforehand. I wish I knew where some of those old ones were, but I distinctly remember doing some for my cousins and a black-and-white historical set for my own amusement. As I imply above, it wasn’t my first website; I was a geek and put up all sorts of webpages about things that interested me – video games, music, interactive stories. In terms of attention received, it was my most successful, but my future husband e-mailed me after reading my video game site, so I can’t necessarily call my paper doll boutique my favorite project I did as a teenager! In any case, I suppose it was only natural to combine my two interests.

At some point, the site’s host vanished, or I had migrated it to my University of Michigan webspace and that vanished, I don’t remember, but either way it was gone. My mom tried to get me to put it back up online somewhere, but by then I was embarrassed at how childish the drawings seemed. But I don’t mind now, they seem cute to me, so I’ll let you all see them too! As you can see, I always did like the concept of the birthday dresses. It is a little sad, though, that after all this time, I haven’t ever done a whole set, much less a whole set in just one year. Hopefully this will be the year to change that…


March Birthday Gown with Blue Tunic and Daffodils

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Today, we have a March birthday gown; the birthstone is aquamarine and the birth flower is the daffodil. I always like doing these, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that in all these months I’ve been drawing them, I’ve skipped a couple of months entirely… I had better make a chart sometime.

“What do you think you’ll do today?” my husband asked me.
“Oh, a March paperdoll.”
“Like the Ides of March?”
“Well, not that kind of March.”
Please do refrain from getting backstabbed in this dress, the blue is far too nice to spoil!

I think I have pretty much recovered from being so horribly sick, so I’ll do my best to get back on the paperdoll schedule! (True, today’s is a little late, but where I am, it’s 10:30. That’s not even approaching midnight! Plenty of time.)


March Birthday Dress with Daffodils and Aquamarine in Yellow and White

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Somehow today’s dress is one of those dresses I finish and never want to see again. It’s certainly all those ruffles. Even I have my limits, you know.

Anyways, this is the birthday dress for March — happy belated birthday, March babies, and I’m sorry about how late it is. The birth flower is the daffodil, and the birth stone is aquamarine, both of which I botched but hey, it is colorful at least. It is more of a dress to wear in the lamb portion of March; from the comfortable vantage point of May, I forget that this dress might be a little cold for Ivy’s shoulders and ankles.

No one has guessed the right number yet, so go ahead and start round two here! A couple people have come extremely close, though. Honorable mention to Sarah for her astronomical guess. If I had 3,424 Prismacolors, I would probably want to insure them…

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. (Why, oh why, did I make it a whole week long? Oh well.)