White Gown with Rainbow Tulle and Rhinestones

A strapless white satin gown with a subtle scroll pattern woven into the fabric and a rhinestone pattern on the bodice. The dress has an empire waist and is mermaid style, fitting tightly around the legs. On one hip is a puffy white satin bow, under which are several puffs of tulle arranged in rainbow colors that fall to the floor. Each puff of tulle is decorated with a number of rhinestones at the edge.

I said that today would be the contest winner elf dress, but I just got back from a trip back to Michigan for my sister-in-law’s wedding and didn’t leave enough time to color the dress properly. Luckily, I already had this dress finished! Before I left on my trip, I was nearly three dresses ahead of schedule, and now the number is back down to zero…

After I finished my previous tulle gown, I wanted to do more and more tulle. I sketched out some dresses, and after I’d sketched this one I decided that I needed to make it into a proper dress immediately. I’m very proud of it — the tulle was fun to make, and I love how billowy it looks. The dress has a Marilyn Monroe singing Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend-style vibe, I think.

Next week will (actually) be the elf dress from my last contest, plus a new poll to decide on what I’ll do for the next contest. Don’t forget that you can now download combined color and black and white PDFs of all of my 2014 dolls and outfits for free! Also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for sneak previews, paperdoll thoughts and Art Nouveau jewelry. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.


Red and Gold Party Dress

A strapless red dress with a tight bodice and a V-shaped waistline. The wide, knee-length circle skirt is flared out as if the wearer is spinning around. The whole dress is made of sleek, bright red fabric patterned with golden curls and dots, and the reverse side of the fabric, seen in a few folds at the edge of the skirt, is gold.

This dress was intended to be a birthday dress, but after much fussing in Photoshop I couldn’t get my initial vision to look as I had intended it to. Just for fun I gave it a bright red color and a playful golden pattern, and then I couldn’t bring myself to change it because it is just too cute. They don’t all have to be super fancy, and I love the movement in the skirt. Maybe this will be the year I finally do a full set of birthday dresses, but this is not the month they will start.

A black and white version of a gown with princess seams and lacing up the bodice. There's an under-layer that shows at the neck. The sleeves are three-quarter and there are long lengths of fabric that drape over the forearms and fall almost to the ground.Thanks to everyone who entered my contest last week! I enjoyed reading everyone’s opinions. The winner of the contest was Lorie Harding. I didn’t have the black and white version ready by last week, but it’s done now, with Mia modeling it for us. So, Lorie, please post a comment or e-mail me by next Friday to tell me how you’d like this one colored!

Next week, we have Adventures in Tulle, in which you all get a view into my digital coloring learning process and we wind up with a ballgown with a tri-color tulle skirt. Don’t forget that you can now download PDFs of all of my 2014 dolls and outfits for free – easier than fussing with all the files individually! You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for sneak previews, paperdoll thoughts and pictures of pretty jewelry. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.


Magenta, Charcoal Grey, Olive Green and Wine Red Ruffled Gown

A strapless, velvet gown with a silver sash around the waist, a peplum, and multiple ruffles dangling from the waist. Most of the gown is dark magenta, while the ruffles are either magenta, green or red at the edges, turning grey towards the top of the ruffle.Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.
It’s contest time! This time it’s on Facebook, so please take a look at my Facebook page to enter. The winner gets to tell me how to color a brand new medieval dress! If you don’t use Facebook, no worries, because I plan to move the contests around. The next one may be over Twitter, through my mailing list or on this blog. This was colored for the winner of my last contest, Lauren. She guessed that my son had a thing for spoons. (It’s been long enough since then that he can’t be easily amused by just handing him a grown-up spoon. No, he wields spoons on his own these days, and he only needs me to just scrape up the last bits of peanut butter oatmeal for him.) Lauren wrote, “I like the ruffle gown from the may 15th 2010 post; I picture it in a dark purpely magenta with wine red, olive green and charcoal grey accents. I think the dress should have a velvety, smoky look to it.” I hope you like it, Lauren!

I decided to use colored pencils for this dress, just for old times’ sake. If all goes well, this will be the last dress for Grace and Ivy, and it just seemed right to color it this way. I haven’t touched my colored pencils for so long that when I started taking them out, I felt like the hero of a samurai movie or a Western who’s forsworn violence taking up the sword or gun one more time. Because of my carpal tunnel, I’ve been scared of what it would feel like, but my thumb didn’t go numb at all. It just felt awkward to draw with a brace on my hand, and my hand ached slightly. This experience made me feel more confident about moving to digital coloring. I’m not saying I’m never going to use colored pencils again, certainly. It was just plain fun to draw with them, and I’m glad I did this dress in them.

But they have so many drawbacks compared to digital coloring! For one thing, they never look as good as scanned as they do drawn. This one looks much more subtle in reality, but if I try to even it out once it’s scanned, it just looks washed out. Doing digital coloring, I know from the start how the color will look in the end, and it’s much less frustrating. Plus, I don’t have to deal with a hundred plus pencils, not to mention sharpening them. That’s a real concern! If I’m drawing while my son naps, there’s no sharpening for me.

One of the biggest problems is that there’s no changing things after the fact. I decided, after drawing the first green ruffle, that the ruffles really needed just a touch of a lighter color on the edge, otherwise they looked too flat. But it was too late to add it with colored pencils. (I added just a touch of green in Photoshop later.) With colored pencils, I put something on the page and that’s where it stays, but I can redo lines, colors and so on as often as I need to when I’m using Photoshop or Procreate (my iPad drawing program). This can be both good and bad — you should see me redraw a simple-looking line ten times to get it just right — but mostly I think it leads to better drawings.

It does make my hand hurt, sadly, although it’s nowhere near where it was when I first started wearing the wrist brace. I can tell that I don’t want to do the detail work that really makes a drawing great, just because it would involve a lot of gripping the pencil tightly and pressing really hard. It makes me feel like I just want to get this drawing done already.

All the same, using colored pencils gave me a sense of nostalgia. I’ll probably never write them off completely…

Next Friday, if all goes well, you’ll meet my new doll and see the site redesign! If all doesn’t go well, I’ll still have something pretty for you to enjoy, so no worries. Wish me luck, and wish my husband Brian luck, because he’s the one doing all the fiddly WordPress stuff! Don’t forget to enter my contest on Facebook, and for updates on how the new content is going, follow me on Twitter. Also, if you use Pinterest, please check out my profile: I’m taking a page from RLC’s book and using it for paperdoll reference — and plain old pretty thing reference, too.

Edit Jan. 24 1:17 PM: My mom suggested that I add a mask, and I thought that was a great idea, so I did! The PDF has now been fixed, too.


Livedolling the Oscars: Anne Hathaway’s Red Gown, Natalie Portman’s Purple Gown, Gwyneth Paltrow’s White Gown and Amy Adams’ Blue Gown

Click for larger version (PNG):red gown, purple gown, white gown, blue gown,; click for PDF version: red gown, purple gown, white gown, blue gown, Click here for the list of dolls.

Oscars Contest: The contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered!

8:43 PST: And there’s my last dress – Amy Adam’s gown. Yes, I know that those four thumbnails look awful, maybe I’ll fix it tomorrow… Anyways, thanks to those of you who entered the contest and followed along! This was a lot of fun, I hope to do it again next year.

8:36 PST: Congratulations to Brian and Angie – they both guessed Alice in Wonderland for Costume Design, Colin Firth for Best Actor, Natalie Portman for Best Actress and The King’s Speech for Best Picture!

8:25 PST: Four people so far have gotten three of the four categories right…

7:22 PST: Well, I’ve done three – I can kill my fingers on Amy Adam’s dress now, I think.

7:20 PST: Hm, now what? I’d do Helena Bonham-Carter’s dress if I had Cool Grey 90% or 70%, but both are too small to sharpen… Bored now

7:00 PST: Only one commenter guessed a movie besides Alice in Wonderland for Best Costume Design… so the field is still wide open. :)

6:59 PST: And Alice in Wonderland has it!

6:57 PST: I thought I’d take a stab at Gwyneth Paltrow’s shiny dress – unlike most of the things I draw, I think it turned out better scanned than the original! I took a little artistic license with the placement of the gold ornament. The costume design Oscar is coming up… I wonder if anyone’s going to win my contest?

6:16 PST: Finished Natalie Portman’s dress! And now… hmmm.

5:38 PST: I like Anne Hathaway’s new dress better than the red one! Great patterns… sparkly too

5:33 PST: Trying to figure out how to watch online – maybe it’s just a ploy to get people to pay the $5 for the extra content, but the Oscars official site seems a lot more fussy than necessary. This site seems to work – hat tip to ask mefi. Lys did a fantastic drawing of Mila Kunis’ gown!

4:53 PST: In contrast, I could probably finish Reese Witherspoon’s in about twenty minutes – not necessarily a compliment. Next will probably be Natalie Portman or Helena Bonham-Carter, but I haven’t decided yet.

4:48 PST: I do like the color on Amy Adams’ gown and the green jewelry she’s wearing, and I would probably draw it if I didn’t mind killing my hands for the evening…

4:45 PST: Anne Hathaway’s red Valentino gown! I’ve been listening to the red carpet patter, but I’ve only taken a few glances away from the drawing, so now it’s time to pick another one…

3:40 PST: I guess I’ll start with Anne Hathaway, seeing as how she’s hosting. Incidentally, I’m looking at Getty Images’ Academy Awards Arrivals page for close-ups. Again, if there’s a better source, pass it on!

3:00 PM PST: The Oscars site says that the red carpet starts in an hour, but the AP live stream is already going. I guess the dresses won’t really be here for a bit, so time to get my colored pencils together…

10:15 AM PST: Welcome, everyone! Before this gets started, two things:

1) Let’s have a special Oscars contest! In the comments section, post your guesses for which movies will win Best Picture and Best Costume Design, and which actors will win Best Leading Actor and Best Leading Actress. (Click for the list of nominated movies.) The contest is closed when Best Costume Design is announced, one guess per person please, and it’s open to anyone. The prize for anyone who gets the right combination is a black and white outfit of your choice colored by me as you like, plus something new for the first person to guess correctly… :)

2) And how about an Oscars poll?

See you all in a few hours!