Historical

1930s Evening Gown in Sparkly Purple

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A 1930's style evening gown. It is sleeveless, and has a deep V neck with ruching at the shoulders and chest. It has a peplum around the hips and a long, fitted skirt that flares out slightly at the ankles. It is a warm, dark purple and is covered with sequins, making it sparkle brilliantly all over.Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

After several hours of dinking around with brushes and layer styles, I finally have a method of doing sparkles like this. I suspect you’ll see many more sparkly outfits in the future, because I’d really like to get it right. It’s one thing I couldn’t do as well with colored pencils: this sparkly dress came out really well, but I still remember the hand pain. The brushes I used to create the sparkly effect came from Obsidian Dawn.

Don’t forget I’ve got a contest going on!
What is Milo’s favorite food?
The first person to answer correctly gets to tell me how I should color this 1930s black and white gown. (I’m going to color other ones eventually, but for now I want to practice on this one.) One entry only please, and you can enter even if you’ve won a contest before. No one got it last time, so if you guessed yesterday, you can guess again today. (Well, technically only one person even guessed… I really have been away for too long!)

I’m going to try to do a new recoloring every day this week, so let’s have a poll to help me decide what to try next…

poll by twiigs.com

1930s Evening Gown in Light Blue

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A 1930's style evening gown. It is sleeveless, and has a deep V neck with ruching at the shoulders and chest. It has a peplum around the hips and a long, fitted skirt that flares out slightly at the ankles. It is a light bluish-green and has a small floral pattern all over.Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.
I’m back! I never can stop paperdolling for too long, even with a baby. As you can see, there’s something different about this dress. It’s one of my black and white dresses, and I’ve colored it in Photoshop. Please don’t worry that I’ve abandoned my colored pencils! I’ve decided to learn to use Photoshop to color for a project my husband Brian and I are working on. I’ve always used it for various things, but there are so many things I still have to learn about it. Melissa Evans’ Coloring Line Art tutorial has been the most useful tutorial I’ve found, although I’ve poked at other ones as well. I’ve got some quibbles about how this one turned out, but it is a first attempt. It is much easier than I thought it would be, once you learn how to break it down. (For example, clipping masks changed my entire outlook on coloring with Photoshop. It makes so much sense! I just never knew.) For this dress, I used a pattern made by Jen of Pixels & Ice Cream, Feliz Navidad Damask. I’m on the lookout now for good patterns and brushes, so if you know of any, please let me know!

You may have noticed an e-mail sign up form to the right. If you sign up, I’ll e-mail you whenever I have a new update. Of course, I won’t sell your address or spam you or anything like that. I hope it’s a good solution to my habit of erratic posting.

Milo smiling and walking around in the rose garden. How is Milo doing, you might ask? He’s doing beautifully! Just look at him. That’s where all my free time goes. It’s also why my desk is piled three feet high with books. (He likes to take them off the shelves, so I have to rescue them.) Another reason why, for the time being, digital coloring wins over ten plastic bags of colored pencils…

I have a long ways to go to get good at digital coloring, so I’m going to try to do a lot of it in the next few months. So let’s have a contest!
What is Milo’s favorite food?
The first person to answer correctly gets to tell me how I should color this 1930s black and white gown. (I’m going to color other ones eventually, but for now I want to practice on this one.)

For this contest, even if you’ve won one of my previous contests you can enter. Let’s call it the great contest reset button. One entry only, please, and my mom and husband are excluded. (You guys get a free suggestion without having to enter, how’s that?) Get your entries in now, while everyone else has forgotten this blog exists!

1939 White Dress with Red Trim and Autumn Leaf Pattern for Thanksgiving

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A white dress patterned all over with small orange, yellow and red leaves in different shapes. The sleeves are short, slightly puffed at the shoulder and bordered at the bottom edge with a looped pattern in bright red. It has a V-neck, also bordered with the same red pattern, and pintucks at the shoulders. There's a row of three tightly-spaced small white buttons over the bust, and it's cinched at the waist with a red-patterned belt which has a white circle-shaped buckle. The skirt is a simple A-line skirt with a hemline a few inches below the knee.Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

Today is Thanksgiving here in America, and last year I did a Thanksgiving-themed 1860s ball gown as a reference to the year the holiday was established. But in 1939, in the middle of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed it up a week so that there would be a longer shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. As you might imagine, this didn’t go over well with everyone at the time, but for my purposes I am imagining my dolls to be early adopters. So this year, we have a 1939-style dress with an autumn leaf pattern to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Do I ever feel like I have a lot to be thankful for this year! My husband, my family, my friends, the entire medical establishment — I could really go on and on. I won’t bore you all, though, but rather will leave you with one piece of new information: we went in for the ultrasound yesterday, and it’s a boy!

I hope that those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving today will have a lovely one!

Golden Yellow and Blue 1700s Gown

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

Shannon won the contest before last for guessing which kid I was in this picture: I’m the girl with short brown hair to the top right, underneath the outstretched arm of the boy on the chair. There are pictures of me on the “about” page and on my Twitter feed, so you can see how I turned out. She wrote:

Yaay! Lucky guess. :) I would looove to see the black and white 1700s dress colored in a golden yellow and royal (tending navy) blue with cream lace.

It reminds me of the other time I colored this gown, but it’s cute in its own right! I hope you like it, Shannon.