Spring Dress Based Off Of The New Yorker Fashion Issue Cover

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The New Yorker Fashion issue arrived the other day, and I loved the cover, so I drew a dress based off of the pattern. I think it looks nice and springy, if a little busy…

I always enjoy the fashion issue, probably because I love clothes and I don’t have a particle of style myself!


Mermaid Monday #1: Golden Kelp Mermaid

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When I look at my site stats, the new blog’s most popular page (besides the doll) is consistently the mermaid one, and a lot of the search engine keywords are mermaid-related. Yes, that’s right, people aren’t searching for zombie paperdolls, they aren’t searching for cupcake aprons, but instead they are searching for mermaids. Now if they were searching overwhelmingly for zombie paperdolls, it’s still unlikely I would have Soulless Saturdays or Flesh-Eating Fridays, but I just love drawing my mermaids.

So, from now until I get bored of it, every Monday is Mermaid Monday! (Except for when it’s not. For example, St. Patrick’s Day next week will not feature a green mermaid, I’ve got plans for that day.) Mermaid Monday might mean old-school shimmery mermaid tails and all the accessories currently fashionable under the sea, or the kinds of things mermaids might wear, should they have to venture on the land for some reason — diplomatic errands, say, or to try capturing the heart of a human, or for just simple curiosity. (What, that just sounds like an excuse to draw pretty gowns in cool colors? I don’t know why you would think such a thing…)

Now, this mermaid, even among mermaids (not renowned for their modesty) is really quite vain. She looks down on those that drape themselves with pearls, jewels, chains and silky fabrics, because to her, all of that artificiality is unnecessary for one with such a shining golden tail. Adding more gold to gold would just be gilding the lily; one might even say “tacky,” and that is a sin with her set. So she goes for a more natural look, for a contrast.


Showgirl Outfit from “We’re In The Money,” The Gold Diggers of 1933

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You know this song — you’ve probably heard Bugs Bunny singing it. “We’re in the money, we’re in the money / We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!” Or, if you’re not a Bugs Bunny fan, perhaps you’ve seen this very scene in Bonnie and Clyde, as a short bit of sardonic commentary on their exploits. It’s from a movie called The Gold Diggers of 1933, a goofy, shiny Depression-era musical that, as far as I know, is the only movie to feature Ginger Rogers singing in Pig Latin. Upon reflection, I wonder if the coins shouldn’t have been silver…

I wouldn’t envy you, by the way, if you tried to cut this out and actually put it on a doll. Maybe drop the trailing coin boa on the one side and pretend it goes out behid her instead?


Aqua 1950s V-Neck Dress from A Dress A Day

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I e-mailed Erin from A Dress A Day last week and submitted my blog for her Linktastic Fridays, and today, when she posted it, my traffic went waaaay up. Since I started I’ve gotten maybe a hundred, two hundred hits a day, and on Friday, over a thousand! My stats graph looks like a cute little worm sticking its head up and looking around curiously.

A Dress A Day always makes me wish I could sew. I can’t sew well, and I’ve thought recently of taking a class, but it is a little hard to be all that enthusiastic about it when two hours with the Prismacolors will get me a dress, done exactly as I wish it, with divine colors and as much lace, frills, jewels and amazing fabric as I care to lavish on for rather less than I’d pay for the real thing. And if I can’t wear it, Sylvia can, and that way it never gets dirty or torn. If I had carte blanche and a personal dressmaker, I would wear things like this all day, but as it is I have colored pencils, and that works for me. Anyways, this dress is based off of one on Erin’s page, although it’s more aqua and the collar isn’t quite right.

On a sadder note, I think we are entering the last days of my scanner. (You can kind of see the banding on the skirt, and that’s because I messed around with the placement; when I scanned it as I always do, the banding was VERY apparent…) Hopefully we’ll pick up a new one soon enough that I won’t have to miss any days. (I do a lot of the days in advance and post them later thanks to WordPress, but right now, I’m not any days ahead…)