Fantasy

Blue and White Gown, and a Vacation Announcement

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Well, I may as well make it official… I haven’t really felt inspired to draw for some time now, and I have some other projects that I’ve been really into lately, so I’m going to take a bit of a paperdoll vacation. I’ll post if I happen to feel like drawing something, but I won’t stick to a schedule. I’ll come back, because I always do, but I couldn’t say when; I am thinking probably within a couple of months.

If you’re wondering if I’m still alive, your best bet is to check my Twitter feed. (But I don’t lead a dangerous life, so there’s no need to worry!) Thank you all for your patience with me, and check back in a while!

Green and Red Elf Gown

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So this dude named Brian won my Academy Awards contest, and he wrote:

In an alternate version of “The Lord of The Rings”, the Council of Elrond determines that the only way to get the One Ring safely to Mordor is to deliver it using an iconic promotional vehicle from 20th century American culture. Please color the black and white elf gown (with circlet) to suit an fair elfin maiden as she pilots the following vehicle to Mordor: http://bit.ly/bmJLcf

This guy is obviously bad news, but he won, so I guess I’d better humor him…

Nah, just kidding. He’s my beloved husband, which usually disqualifies him from my contests, but since I was open to having multiple winners for that particular contest I thought I might as well give him a chance for once. I rather ended up regretting it; somehow, when faced with such a description, my normal creativity deserted me entirely.

“I won it fair and square,” he says. “Not saying ya didn’t,” I reply. “But I’m excluded from the future ones, right?” “Well, I usually reset it every year…” “I’m excluded for bad behavior.” “Yeah, I think so.”

Anyways, I’ve put it off for all this time, but I thought I had better just get it done and hopefully never think of it again. So here we have the ketchup-swirled tunic with mustard yellow borders over a gown patterned with an abstract relish-and-white onion design; a mustard yellow circlet completes the ensemble. Oh well. This is why I do the paperdolls and he writes snarky things on Twitter.

Help me get the taste of this one out of my mouth (rimshot) – let’s do a new contest! Thanks to Brian for suggesting the question for me, as penance. Winner, as always, gets to tell me how to color a black-and-white dress (and please please choose pretty colors).

What (present-day) US state was my great-grandfather born in? At the time, my great-great-grandparents owned a hardware store in a boom town.

Update: Nikki guessed it! He was born in Skagway, Alaska.

Purple Tailed Mermaid with Seaweed Top

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I haven’t done a mermaid for a while — I kind of got burnt out on Mermaid Mondays. They really need a good story behind them to inspire me, but good stories take time, and without that time I come up with things like the laundry mermaid. So I’ve been neglecting them, and I thought I’d do a mermaid tail tutorial to make up for it… Please forgive me for not putting it up tonight – it is about 30 images long and they all need to be resized, thumbnailed, etc. I’m ever so tired of looking at this single tail, I just don’t have the patience or the eye strength anymore! I will try to get it up tomorrow, though. So watch this space…

Daffodil Fairy Dress with Crocuses

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Here in Tacoma, the daffodils have been blooming for a while now; I got a lot of mileage out of this fact when I was back in Michigan, where the bitter cold on my legs brought back memories of ten years of winters that just refused to turn lamb-like. I’d get asked “So what’s it like out there?” A smug “well, the daffodils are already blooming” seldom failed to put an adorable look of hopelessness on the face of my winter-worn questioner. This is, certainly, the flip side of being teased for the endless rain.

I bought a bunch of ten daffodils from the store the other day, when they hadn’t even started to think about opening yet and you could just barely see a touch of yellow at the ends. Now, they look like this – brilliant orange and yellow. You know me, I can’t see such a pretty image without wanting to make a skirt out of it. I’ve included some bonus crocuses, too.

I don’t really do fairies very much; I have no shame about spending my time making up all kinds of mermaid tails and stories, but fairies bore me in much the same way blue jeans and real royalty bore me. But really, who else would wear this dress? Now, back when I was drawing clothes for the Boutique, I worked out a way to make separate fairy wings, through some system of cutting a slit in the doll’s chest and poking a tab through. I think sometimes I should sort that out again, but I draw fairy outfits so seldom that it always sinks back down to the bottom of the pool of things on my mind at any given moment.

Let’s have a new contest… The winner gets to tell me how to color one of my black-and-white dresses, as usual!
What’s my favorite flower?
Update: Ana got it – it’s the morning glory. (Heavenly Blue, preferably.)