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For those of you who haven’t been following my site for a couple of years (or a decade, depending on how you look at it), allow me to explain why today’s dresses seem rather different from usual: they’re from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique, which was my first paper doll-centric website. I drew outfits for it from December 1998, my sophomore year of high school, to May 2000, partially through my first year of college. It’s no longer online in its entirety, but from time to time I’ll put up some of the old content as filler for anyone with an interest in how my drawing skills developed, and it’s also a thrill to hear from people who followed the old site from time to time.
I’m not sure why it seemed like a good idea in the first place. I had been drawing paperdolls for my own amusement for a few years beforehand. I wish I knew where some of those old ones were, but I distinctly remember doing some for my cousins and a black-and-white historical set for my own amusement. As I imply above, it wasn’t my first website; I was a geek and put up all sorts of webpages about things that interested me – video games, music, interactive stories. In terms of attention received, it was my most successful, but my future husband e-mailed me after reading my video game site, so I can’t necessarily call my paper doll boutique my favorite project I did as a teenager! In any case, I suppose it was only natural to combine my two interests.
At some point, the site’s host vanished, or I had migrated it to my University of Michigan webspace and that vanished, I don’t remember, but either way it was gone. My mom tried to get me to put it back up online somewhere, but by then I was embarrassed at how childish the drawings seemed. But I don’t mind now, they seem cute to me, so I’ll let you all see them too! As you can see, I always did like the concept of the birthday dresses. It is a little sad, though, that after all this time, I haven’t ever done a whole set, much less a whole set in just one year. Hopefully this will be the year to change that…