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White Christmas Dress with Red or Blue Candy Cane Striped Sleeves and Santa Hat

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Click for larger version (PNG):red stripes, blue stripes; click for PDF version: red stripes, blue stripes. Click here for the list of dolls.

Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it! To those of you who don’t, I hope you can bear with three days of Christmas-themed stuff. If the candy cane stripes are just too much to bear, I think this wintery blue version is rather sweet, too.

Actually, this dress started life as a princess gown that had three layers right down to the floor, but the first two were too long compared to the third, and the proportions bothered me; then, I thought that the candy-cane striped sleeves looked kind of cartoony for a formal ballgown, but just perfect with a sassy above-the-knee circle skirt and a Santa hat! When I was sketching this gown out, I was thinking of the collectible holiday Barbie dolls of my youth: I don’t believe I ever had any, but I appreciated them. (That would explain the extra-puffed sleeves: I was a kid of the ’80s.)

Because of the placement of the skirt and sleeves, if you were to cut this out, you’d have to cut a space for the hand inside the skirt, just under the sleeves. If anyone attempts it, please let me know how it goes.

Whenever I put up two colors of something, I always have to ask…

poll by twiigs.com

Fallout Retro Blue and Yellow Vault Dweller Jumpsuit

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

Brian and I got ourselves a PS3 for Christmas – a little early – and so this Saturday has been devoted to gaming, specifically marathon sessions of Fallout 3. We both loved the first Fallout (and I think he liked Fallout 2, though I never played it), so it was an obvious choice for our first PS3 game.

I took a stab at playing it this morning, but I’m not all that good at any game I deem “twitchy,” which means anything that requires more coordination than taking out your average Dragon Warrior slime, because, although it’s not apparent from this blog – at least, I do hope it’s not apparent – I’ve got some mild coordination issues. Thanks to rather a lot of physical therapy when I was very young, it only really plagues me when I’m trying to remember which button changes the perspective, and the camera is pointed somewhere at my feet, I may have accidentally given my pistol to a dead ant, and oh, by the way, there’s a pair of rabid molerats trying to eat me and I just simply can’t deal. On the upside, that doesn’t happen to me very often, because I play the kind of games where everyone takes turns beating on each other like civilized folk. I can handle a very small amount of twitch in my games – I did play through the first Fallout, once as a pacifist – but past a certain point, I’m pretty hopeless.

Also, I’m pathetically easy to creep out – something about horrifying post-nuclear wastelands just tends to make me antsy, you know? When I played the first Fallout, I nearly held my breath the whole time I was in the Glow. Still, I notice that Brian is just now, after playing all day, wandering around the area I got myself repeatedly killed in earlier, so I wonder if my problem is that I got in too over my head and didn’t realize it?

In any case, Fallout 3 features some nicely tailored, practical-looking Vault jumpsuits, but me, I’ve got a soft spot for the shiny retro ones. The Vault number is on the back, so you can choose for yourself which vaults Ivy and Grace hail from.

Grey Kimono with Floating White Camellia Pattern Inspired by Sanjuro, plus bonus Black and White Kimono

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Click for larger version (PNG):grey kimono, black and white kimono; click for PDF version: grey kimono, black and white kimono. Click here for the list of dolls.

Brian and I signed up for Netflix again recently. We had it a few years back, but canceled our subscription when we both went to grad school and then when he started his own business, leaving us little time to see each other let alone watch movies together. Now, with more reasonable work schedules, we’re merrily filling up our queues again — although I think I got up to around 300 movies in my queue last time, and I’m trying to be more restrained this time around.

The last movie I got was Sanjuro, a samurai movie directed by Akira Kurosawa, and I asked Brian if he wanted to watch it with me. “It’s not going to be like that other one, is it?” he replied. “That other one” would be Rashomon, which we went to see last year; Brian had never seen it before, so he went into it expecting some fun sword fights presented from different perspectives. After he crawled out of the theater, he was despondent about the human condition for a full week. “I don’t remember the description too well, but I think this one’s supposed to be funny,” I replied, a little hesitantly, thinking that I really shouldn’t be so impulsive with that shiny “Add” button.

Luckily, I was right: I think Sanjuro is the funniest samurai movie I’ve ever seen, although it’s hardly a comedy. Toshirō Mifune plays a wandering samurai who lends his expertise – less out of pity than from exasperation at their incompetence – to nine young samurai trying to save their clan leader from being framed for corruption. I don’t like to give too much away, so if you like samurai movies, see if you can find this one somewhere.

I’ve taken a stab at drawing a kimono here – my first one, and it sure does show, so if you know more about kimono than I do, please forgive me. I have a passing acquaintance with the various kimono rules and guidelines, but I’m no expert yet, so rather than a formal kimono I was aiming for a more casual and stylish look. (It might help to know I’m a big fan of CHOKOとチョコと, Mamechiyo — just try to tell me this isn’t awesome — and so on) The main design is a reference to the climactic scene in the movie, where the signal to attack is a mass of camellias floating down a stream. Now, camellias are apparently a rare design for kimonos, because the entire flower drops off the plant at once, instead of petal by petal; this was thought to be evocative of beheading, and therefore not the kind of imagery you wanted all over your sleeves. My design is intended to reference the movie, so I will not worry about emblematic misfortune. (But, should your doll accidentally get her head ripped off, she’s in a better position than a samurai — just print her out again.) Incidentally, the white thing on the obi (the sash around the waist) is the sail of a boat – I didn’t position it right, and it’s covered up by the obijime (the yellow cord). Since you can’t see the back of the obi, you have to imagine that the large, flat knot at the back has a pattern with two more boats on it, for a total of three boats. That would be a not-so-subtle reference to the actor Toshirō Mifune, whose family name 三船 literally means “three boats.”

Since I missed Saturday, I’m adding a bonus today, a black and white kimono. Kimono are all about the patterns and colors, so I thought it would be much easier to draw kimono if I could just have a coloring-book style page to test colors on. I’ve been reading about kimono for many months now: the problem is that I’m familiar enough with them to know all the many ways in which I could get things wrong. If I draw a French court gown in colors that weren’t popular back then, or a 1920s skirt with a hemline a couple inches off, it doesn’t bother me, but somehow kimono are really intimidating. But now I’ve gotten over this first hurdle, I’m going to try some more designs!

By the way, there are a couple new paper doll blogs for you to enjoy: …. Of Paper Dolls…. and Kat’s Paper Doll Emporium. Check them out and leave nice comments! Don’t miss the other delightful paper doll blogs, either – there’s a handy list of them to the right.

Prismacolors used: Cool Grey 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 70%, Sandbar Brown, Aquamarine, Light Aqua, Indigo Blue, Blue Lake, Powder Blue, Black, Sunburst Yellow, Goldenrod, Tuscan Red, Crimson Red, Dark Umber and Light Umber, Verithin Black, Sakura Souffle White Gel Pen

December Birthday Dress in White and Blue with Narcissus and Silver and Turquoise Belt

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

Yes, for once I’m prompt with the birthday dress. That’s mostly because I didn’t get home until fairly late and all of my other ideas were fairly labor-intensive… but perhaps also because I rather unfairly favor December. Why? Well, for one thing, my own birthday is in December! But when, you might wonder? Let’s make it a contest… Winner gets to tell me how to color one of my black-and-white dresses, as usual!

When is Liana’s birthday?
Rules as always:
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter. (Music contest winners are OK to enter a black-and-white coloring contest though. By the way, I intend to do those this month, and I’m sorry to have gotten so off track!)
2) One guess per person per day.
3) If no one gets the exact date by noon PST, December 6th, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) Those of you who know me well enough to already know are disqualified.

Update: Ana guessed right: my birthday was December 3rd. Sorry I couldn’t confirm it earlier, I was out of town (the post on Saturday was a scheduled post).

Prismacolors used: Black, Indigo Blue, Cool Grey 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 70%, Sunburst Yellow, Goldenrod, Dark Umber, Light Aqua, Aquamarine, Sky Blue Light, Blue Slate, White, Verithin Warm Grey 20%, Cool Grey 20%, Orange, colorless blender, Sakura white gel pen