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White Medieval Wedding Gown with Long Sleeves and Gold and Silver Embroidery

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

“This may or may not influence what I end up drawing,” I wrote when I put up the wedding dress poll, but then “flowing, fantasy” gowns got over 50% of the vote, and, well, allow me to shamelessly pander for a night. I hope this is the sort of thing that people were envisioning; sorry that the bouquet looks so awkward. I envisioned it as a bouquet of ivy and sweet peas, incidentally, although I got a little tired towards the end.

Hey, let’s do a new contest! This one will be easy, so someone’s bound to guess it soon.
Last week (from the 8th to the 14th), how many different countries did my site visitors come from?
Post your guess in the comments! Again, the rules:
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter.
2) One guess per person per day.
3) If no one gets the exact date by 9:00 PM EST, June 19th, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) I’ll give one hint each day the contest goes on.

Don’t worry, trazy, I will color yours next week, after I’m done with my week of weddings.

poll by twiigs.com

1915 Afternoon Dress in Blue and White Lace with Pink Rose Inspired By Uneasy Money By P.G. Wodehouse

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I’m listening to Uneasy Money by P.G. Wodehouse right now. I love listening to LibriVox audiobooks of Wodehouse’s stories, because they are just so darn cute and light-hearted, and I can space out a little with them when I’m doing the dishes. I’ve listened to so many now that I’m good at guessing who ends up with who. Not that it is all that much of a challenge once you get about a fifth of the way through the book, but I’m to the point where I have only to hear a name and I think things like “Ah, there’s our main love interest” or “He’s just a red herring, his job is going to be to cause trouble for our heroine.” But I haven’t finished the story yet, so even though I feel like I have comfortably predicted all the pairings, please don’t tell me how things are settled at the end!

When reading or listening to a book, I’m always unconsciously open to clues as to when it was set, but I haven’t heard any so far. However, Uneasy Money was serialized starting in 1915, so I think that’s a pretty reasonable date for a dress. I like 1915 fashion, actually, because the skirts get a little fuller than they were in 1914, and it’s really quite cute. Compare March 1914 to November 1915, and you’ll see what I mean.

Contest is over, as of 9:00 PM, and no one guessed the exact date. Brian and I were married on August 9, 2003, so the closest guess was Trazy’s guess of August 5th. Congratulations, Trazy, and tell me which black and white dress you’d like for me to color and how!

Retro Yellow and Black Ms. Pac-Man Dress with Fruit Pattern and Pink Bow

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My beloved husband Brian requested a dress based on Ms. Pac-Man, and because I so often dismiss his ideas for paper doll outfits in a rather cursory fashion (and you would too, if you heard them) I thought it would be nice to indulge him a little.

We used to spend a lot of time at an arcade called Pinball Pete’s, back when we were in college and I lived on that side of Ann Arbor. Brian was pretty good at Ms. Pac-Man, and I liked to watch him escape the little ghosts. He was awfully cute when he wasn’t quite fast enough and got caught! He doesn’t play much anymore, now that we are stolid and serious adults (well, really rather that we live on the other side of town now), but you still can’t bring it up without him mentioning that the pretzel is counted as a fruit in Ms. Pac-Man. So of course, the pretzel duly makes its appearance in my dress.

For some reason I felt a sort of retro, fake-50’s feel would suit the theme, but now that the dress is done and I have no intention whatsoever of starting over, I wonder if perhaps an 80’s theme would have been better? Pretzel-covered leg-warmers? … Yeah, maybe not.

No one has quite won the contest yet… Just be glad I didn’t ask for the year, too!
What day is my wedding anniversary?
Post your guess in the comments! Again, the rules:
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter.
2) One guess per person per day.
3) If no one gets the exact date by 9:00 PM EST, June 9th, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) I’ll give one hint each day the contest goes on.
– Yesterday’s hint: It was in the summer.
– Today’s hint: The day is an odd number.

Halloween LOTR Costume Series #5: Grey Wizard (“Gwendolf”)

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For tonight, here is my version of a female wizard. (My husband called her “Gwendolf” and the name stuck. My apologies.) None appear anywhere in the series, but it is for Halloween and I thought it would be fun… And it was fun, even if I used up a year’s worth of French Grey pencils, even if the end result is a little boring.

My husband heard me complaining and warns me “You should watch out. You don’t call wizards boring. They’ll transform you into a little toad!” I should not like to be transformed, into a toad or otherwise, and so I added cute little hem designs and dialed down the criticism of the grey. If I was sticking to canon I could have given her a blue hat, but the more I look at it, the more I think, well, she looks kind of cool in her desaturated glory… Actually, playing around with hue/saturation in Photoshop, I can make “Gwendolf the Off-White,” “Gwendolf the Lime Green” oh and you don’t want to see “Gwendolf the Electric Blue,” trust me…

I’m afraid this one is going up a little late tonight, but it’s still the 8th where I am. So far I think I’m doing better than last year in terms of paperdoll consistency.

There’s not much reason to put up the poll today too, but I might as well. Don’t worry, fairy fans, I would place money on them taking the third week, if I was a betting sort of gal…

poll by twiigs.com