empire waist

White Regency Gown with Blue Wrap, Red Roses and Forget Me Nots for Valentine’s Day

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A white regency gown trimmed with white lace at the neck and sleeves. The sleeves are gently puffed and the bodice is ruched, trimmed on the right side with red roses and blue forget-me-nots. Under the bust is a pink ribbon sash decorated with a scroll pattern. The dress fabric is decorated with small embroidered white flowers, then at the edge of the skirt are pink swags, trimmed with lace, with pink hearts, red roses and blue forget-me-nots at the top of each swag. Intricate white embroidery surrounds the flowers. Under the swags are pleated frills that fan out to the ground and are trimmed with white lace. Long white gloves are attached to the outfit, and there is a blue wrap over the arms that is decorated with a shiny gold paisley pattern. At the neck is a thin gold chain and a pearl pendant.Happy Valentine’s Day! Here is my gift to all my beloved readers, whether you’ve just found my page recently or have been following me for a while. I’ve been drawing on and off for a long time now, but it’s been off a lot more than it’s been on. That means I have very patient fans, so I wanted to do something extra pretty for all of you!

This gown is not based on any particular Regency style, so it is more of a costume than a historically accurate dress. I also tried some new coloring tricks with this one. I use Photoshop’s paths tool to make the lines so nice and clean, but it doesn’t really lend itself to details, so the roses and a lot of other details were drawn in Procreate, my iPad drawing app.

The medieval dress I posted last week was the result of January’s contest — want to help decide what the next theme will be, and maybe get the chance to pick out the coloring yourself? I’m currently running February’s poll over Twitter! I’ve tweeted three categories to choose from, so if you’re using Twitter just follow me and tweet your favorite category. (Don’t forget to include my username, @LianaPaperDolls, so I can see it.) I’ll draw a gown from the winning category and start the contest over Twitter next week!

Come back next week for a outfit based on one of the most popular dramas on Japanese TV! As always, you can follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for update notifications, peeks into how I work, thoughts about designing paper dolls and pretty pictures of jewelry. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon. If I can rustle up a few more patrons, I’ll be able to post a bonus dress!

Purple and Red Empire Waist Gowns with Black Lace Overskirts

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A purple satin empire-waist gown with a ruched bust and small puffed sleeves edged with black lace. The black lace overskirt is secured with a black ribbon and extends past the knees, and it has a scalloped edge. The hem of the dress falls to the ankle, and is decorated with pintucks. There's also a black ribbon choker with a red gem set in gold.

The exact same as the purple dress, only red. Click for larger version (PNG): purple, red; click for PDF version:purple, red. Click here for the list of dolls.

Well, this isn’t the most Halloween-ish dress I’ve ever drawn, and there’s no particular story to go with it, so I’ve added a red version in hopes you’ll overlook those flaws. It might not be a bad one for the Halloween ball, though, considering most of those in attendance seem to prefer huge poofy skirts and overdone detail. Besides, it would be harder to hide a gigantic spider under this dress: always a plus.

Not my best October, but not a total failure either. I’m feeling a little more into the idea of drawing lately, though, so we’ll see how the rest of the year goes!

Green Regency Gown with Ivy Pattern

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

Ana won my last contest for guessing that my favorite flower is the morning glory, and she wrote:

I’d like this dress https://lianaspaperdolls.com/2010/06/12/black-and-white-regency-gown-with-flower-lace/ coloured please.

The main part of the dress I’d like an English Ivy pattern, with vines looking like they are growing up from the bottom of the skirt. I’d like the background of the dress to be a vibrant shade of green like lush grass in summer and the piping and lace to be an earth tone pink.

You know how if you put fabric or paper out in the sun it fades, and you can create patterns but placing objects on it? And then the background is faded version of the pattern? Well if you were to reverse that process so that the main part of the fabric was covered (i.e not faded) and the pattern was faded that is how I imagine the ivy pattern on the dress to look like. similar to the pattern in the gold on this dress https://lianaspaperdolls.com/2010/06/23/colored-1700s-gown-in-gold-white-and-pink/ but more pronounced.

I kinda hope that makes sense, but if not I’m sorry and I did my best.

It made sense, but I don’t know if I quite captured your vision, Ana, so I hope you like it!

I hate to disappoint people, especially my mom, but I won’t be drawing the royal wedding gown: the biggest reason is that I avoid drawing sheer fabrics because the dolls have different skin colors. It’s been suggested that I do two versions, but when the create-a-doll page is up — which I have been working on, albeit off and on — there will be around seven skin colors, so I’m not going to spend that much time on a dress that would be limited to the two dolls that are currently available.

Beyond that, I didn’t really pay attention to the wedding preparations or ceremony, I admired a dozen pictures of the dress and assorted hats, and now it’s out of my mind, which is essentially where it should be. Although I do draw a lot of pretty princess gowns, my affection for them stems from my deep love for fancy dresses and fairy tales; it has nothing to do with real royalty, which just strikes me as sad, stifling and generally illogical. If not for the lace part there’s a good chance I would have drawn the wedding gown, as it’s an iconic dress and a beautiful one, but I don’t care enough to spend the time on a substitute just for the sake of commemorating the fact that the House of Windsor is propagating itself. (I may yet make an exception for Princess Beatrice’s hat.)

If you all are so keen on royalty, I’ll put some time into a series of posts about the Japanese imperial family weddings I’ve been batting around in my mind for a while; my opinion of the Japanese institution isn’t particularly different from my opinion of the English one (if anything it is more critical), but the clothes and history interest me more. And maybe another paperdoll blogger will pick up my slack and draw the dress? Send me a link if you do, I’ll post it here.

Let’s do another contest… Here’s a good one. I’m in this picture. Which one of these kids is me?
Winner gets to choose a black and white drawing for me to color as they direct, as usual!
Update: Shannon guessed it! I’m the girl with short hair at the top right, underneath the outstretched arm of the boy on the chair.

Blue Regency Gown with White Sash

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

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!