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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.

Strapless A-Line Wedding Dress with Feather Fascinator and Blue and Yellow Bouquet

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I’ve been thinking a lot about weddings lately — specifically Japanese imperial weddings, but weddings all the same. It seems like everyone (in America, that is: the sort of thing one wears for an imperial wedding ceremony is rather different) is wearing strapless gowns with A-line skirts in recent years, and I thought it might be fun to take a stab at one myself. Plus, it afforded more opportunities to play with the white gel pen!

I have no idea if blue and light yellow is a popular color combination these days, I just wanted to use some unexpected colors. The fascinator is based on one created by Brian’s cousin Emily. As for the choice of strapless-A-line itself, it’s been popular so long that I’m a little bored of it, but it’s still quite pretty and it has the further advantage of not being a pick-up skirt.

By the way, I’m taking a cue from the new paperdoll blog A Paper Closet and showing the outfit on the doll instead of just having it floating on an invisible mannequin. Check that blog out, by the way, and all of the other paper doll blogs I’ve put up on my blogroll, after losing all my links in a server move. There have been some great ones that started while I was on hiatus, like A Paper Doll Blog and Karen’s Paper Dolls.

You get one more clue today, before the contest ends…

How many visits did my site get between (and including) April 1, 2010 and April 30, 2010?

Don’t forget the rules…
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter.
2) One guess per person per post.
3) If no one gets the exact number by 9:00 PM EST, June 2nd, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) I’ll give one hint each day the contest goes on.
– Sunday’s hint: It’s between 10,000 and 30,000
– Yesterday’s hint: The middle digit is 6.
– Today’s hint: The fourth digit (counting from the right) is an odd number.

Blue Halter Dress with Yellow and Pink Flower Pattern

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

Someone got a new tooooy ♪
I ordered some white gel pens, because I wanted to see if I could do, well, something like this. After playing with them all day, I can happily recommend the Sakura Souffle for use on top of Prismacolors. I will do a tutorial about it at some point, and a comparison of the types of pen I bought as well. But for now, I’m just happy I could do what I wanted to do with white ink! Or rather, I’m on the way to making some cool things, I think.

So this is just me playing around with my toy, I hope you like it. And since I am in such a cheery, experimental mood I couldn’t help fussing around in Photoshop and making a bonus version, too, which is a little less refreshing and springy, a little more chic.

poll by twiigs.com