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Black Masters Cap and Gown

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I’m back, and with a shiny new Masters degree in Teaching English as a Second Language! I found it fascinating, met a lot of great people and now I’m tutoring and rating the TOEFL iBT writing section. Besides that, I’ve been moving to a great new apartment, cooking, reading, keeping my husband fed as he starts his own business and indulging my cats.

What I haven’t been doing is drawing paperdolls, and I think it’s high time that changed.

I graduated in December, and the color of the hood is just what mine was. The dress underneath is green, in honor of EMU’s colors, green and white. The wacky Masters gown sleeves are… sort of an approximation. (I can almost hear my mom telling me that the PhD gown sleeves are easier to draw.)

Anyways, I’ve missed doing paperdolls — I’ve spent far too much time thinking about doing them, and far too little time actually drawing them. I think I’m going to go back to the old Paperdoll Blog format — that is, paperdolls based on whatever I’m watching, reading, listening to or thinking about. I might shoot for one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’m so out of practice, though… so we’ll see. ;)

Blue and gold princess gown (based on a gown from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique)

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I can almost hear my mom now. “She said her midterm was on Thursday, why isn’t anything up yet?”Poor Mom. ;) This is just an update of one of my old Boutique fantasy gowns. This was one of my favorites; there was something about the blue that I liked. I still remember which blues I used originally (ultramarine and Copenhagen blue)… but arguably I was better at doing gold back then.

Check it out, University of Texas has a paper doll collection. They have a few dolls and outfits online, too, representations of women who donated to the accompanying textile collection; I totally dig December’s Christmas tree dress.

White and Blue Angel Costume (based on a costume from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique)

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It’s a half hour before midnight and I’ve managed not to break my streak of two days in a row, although not for lack of trying. I started out so nicely this morning with an attempt to recreate my favorite dress from the Oscars, Penélope Cruz’s amazing pink concoction, which will be up here, eventually. But not today; my attempt at the bodice wasn’t quite the right color. Less of a sophisticated pale peachy-pink — more Totally Actress Barbie! pink. Brian said the pattern looked like muscles, or mummy wrappings, and I’ve known him long enough to take it as a compliment… So then I tried Reese Witherspoon’s dress. Twice.

Night came around, and I thought I’d give up and go with what I knew. So here’s a reproduction of one of my old Boutique outfits: a white angel costume with blue edges and absurdly annoying wings. Don’t ask how one is supposed to keep the halo anywhere near Sylvia’s head; the old one didn’t even have a halo, which makes this, at least in theory, an improvement.

I’ve spent a lot of time with my old Boutique outfits lately: a lot of them make me cringe, all these years later, but some of them weren’t half bad. I never did put them back up after I lost my University space, something my mom has often reminded me of, but if I’m feeling particularly uncreative I may redo some of the ones I like. If I’m feeling really uncreative, I may just put up a small set of Boutique outfits and call it a post of historical interest!