Gowns and Dresses

Blue Regency Gown with White Sash

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I’m sorry for the long absence! I hadn’t even realized it had been that long… I had a couple of days where nothing worked out, and then I got out of the habit, and here it is the middle of April and there are worried comments showing up in my e-mail. I didn’t want to make you wait until Tuesday for something new, so here is a dress for today. It’s been a while since I’ve drawn a regency dress just for the sheer joy of drawing a regency dress… but they do work up quickly, which is just what one needs when one has a paperdoll-related crisis of conscience somewhere around 9:30 P.M.
Hopefully this is enough to get me into the drawing habit again and I will have something new for you on Tuesday!

February Birthday Dress with Primroses

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Well, this dress shows quite clearly why I shouldn’t put off drawing until 9:30 PM — and furthermore, why I shouldn’t try to correct mistakes at 10:15 PM. The black ribbon used to be a too-light lilac that was swallowed up by the rest of the purple; it did need to be changed, and I don’t know what I could have done better, but I do know I couldn’t have done much worse. Oh well. I like the rest of it, and I hope you all do too!

Misplaced black ribbon or no, at the moment I’m all caught up for the year with birthday dresses, which is a nice – and rather rare – feeling! February’s flower is the primrose, and the birth stone is the amethyst.

This post also shows why I shouldn’t start writing at 10:30 PM, so I think I had better stop here for now! I will try to muster up more spirit on Thursday.

Bonus April Birthday Dress with Daisies

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Happy April Fool’s Day, everyone! Don’t worry… it’s back to English today.

If you can actually read Japanese, I should mention (for the sake of my pride) that it probably sounded rather more stilted than my usual writing because I wrote it specifically to be put through Google Translate, so that it would make sense when people clicked the link. (Thanks, Google先生 ^^) Trying to write in English through automatic Japanese machine translation is actually a challenging exercise. (Try it sometime, if you’re learning Japanese. Alternately, take Translation Party for a spin!)

For example, that’s what accounts for the strange punctuation in “スケッチを描くこと、と日本語を勉強すること、のは私にとって大切です。” As it is, it’s rendered as the awkward yet reasonable “Drawing a sketch, and to study Japanese, are important to me.” Take out the commas and the meaning becomes “The Japanese wanted to learn to draw and sketch for me is important.” So it would all look slightly different if I was writing for clarity in Japanese and not clarity in Google Translate-assisted English…

The other entries I just ran through Google Translate because the content wasn’t terribly important – I just wanted to add to the feeling of being overwhelmed by another language. If you can read Japanese, you can see they’re rather a mess!

Since my April birthday dress was overshadowed by the April Fool’s day joke, I thought I’d do a bonus one. I hope it helps to make up for my cruelty ^^;;

Carousel Outfit by Bitter Lilly and Fan-Made Dresses from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

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The drawing on the far left was done by Bitter Lilly for Valentine’s Day. (I’m sorry it took me so long to put it up!) I don’t know the image that inspired her that she refers to on her original post, but I love how soft and ethereal it looks, especially the turtleneck — you can almost feel it, and if I had a turtleneck like that I would always keep petting my own arms and people would look at me strangely.

Bitter Lilly has also colored some of the black and white gowns I have up, as well as drawn a couple more original outfits; check out her DeviantArt page, specifically the “Liana” gallery (although there are some lovely photos on her main page as well!)

These days I don’t get too many fan submissions of outfits that fit my dolls; I suspect a lot of that energy has gone into people creating their own paper doll blogs, as a glance over my blogroll can attest. (Have I mentioned lately how much I love my little subculture? I have high hopes of us landing on the xkcd Map of Online Communities someday, on a little island right near “Diary Blogs” and “Writing/Poetry”.) But back when I did the Boutique, I did have some people send in some great outfits.

Click for the doll.

The blue gown and the yellow jacket with a white skirt are actually by my cousin Becky; if you’ve been paying attention you may remember her from this purple gown and this fairy dress. The pink and green hoopskirt was by someone who wanted to be called “Anonymous” and of course, I’ve lost the original e-mail so I can’t credit her properly ten years later. I had to go back through my files to place a name on most of these, but the geometric blue evening dress is evidently by Emily. Jedi Guinastasia did quite a few for me, particularly a number of dresses from Titanic; the layered dress from Titanic and the blue gown are by her.

Now, how is that for a really lazy post? I didn’t draw a single part of it! Well, I will be back from my trip soon, so look for a new dress in a couple of days!