puffed sleeves

Silver Princess Gown with Blue and Rhinestone Underskirt

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A silvery white gown with a delicate, small scroll pattern all over. The dress is off the shoulder and has large puffed sleeves over the upper arms. The bodice is tight and the skirt is bell-shaped. It's open in the front to show a dark blue underskirt covered with a pattern of rhinestones.Another princess dress! I’m still not ahead, but it’s not really a surprise. I haven’t had a lot of spare time this week and I’m just happy I finished this one! The design on the blue part is inspired by dresses I’ve seen on Pinterest like this blue gown. It’s the first time I tried this particular technique, I will probably use it often but refine it. I’m already wanting to change it on this dress, but… it’s time to post!

Next week, another princess gown! (But I will have something fun lined up for October, as Halloween is traditionally the most important paper doll holiday in my little world…) Don’t forget that you can now download combined color and black and white PDFs of all of my 2014 dolls and outfits for free! Also follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest for sneak previews, paperdoll thoughts and lovely jewelry. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.

1930s Blue Flower Patterned Dress with Lace Scarf and Cherry Brooch

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A 1930s-style blue dress with a small pattern of white flowers and green leaves. The neckline is decorated with a white lace scarf pinned with a plastic brooch in the shape of a yellow bow over a pair of red cherries. The scarf falls in a lace-edged ruffle down the front of the dress. The sleeves are slightly puffed, and there are rows of pintucks down the front of the bodice to each side of the ruffle. It's belted at the waist with the same kind of fabric. The skirt is just past knee length and is slightly flared at the base.
I’m breaking my paper doll slump with this 1930s-style dress! If you don’t follow me on Pinterest, you probably should, or at least you should select a couple of my boards to follow because I actually have nearly 200 boards. (I suggest Jewelry, Gorgeous Dresses and, of course, Liana’s Paper Dolls.) You may be asking, what does one person need with nearly 200 boards? The answer is, I have one board for fashion plates, illustrations and actual examples of clothes from almost every year between 1788 and 1965. Even if you aren’t foolhardy enough to hit that “Follow All” button, it’s fun to go to my profile and just scroll down, watching the fashions change. Whenever I want to draw a historical outfit, I’m always scrambling through Google Image Search, museum sites and so on for examples of outfits from that time, so having these boards is a great resource for me! I particularly like 1930s clothes, so I did a 1930s dress today. It’s mostly based on late 1930s styles (I think mostly 1937), but the pattern and decorations are my own invention.

In other news, I now have PDF collections of my 2014 dolls and outfits to download! So if you want to print them out, you don’t have to fuss with each individual PDF any more. They’re pay what you want, including $0, and you don’t even have to sign up for anything or have any credit card information if you get them for free.

I don’t have an elf dress ready for the next contest, but let’s get it started anyway! I will have it done by next week at the latest, and the winner can decide on the coloring then. I promise it’ll be pretty!

To enter the contest, post a comment with your favorite time period for clothes. One comment per person please, and I’ll choose the winner with a random number generator. If you’ve won a contest this year, please don’t enter again. (And Mom, you’re free to enter!) The winner will get to tell me how to color an elf dress.

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!

Black and Blue Assassin Princess Gown

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A dramatic ball gown with a black sequined bodice and long sleeves, puffed blue sleeves at the shoulder and a full, shiny blue skirt with a black sequined hem. There's a wide purple satin sash around the waist and purple satin at the wrists.Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

A few weeks ago, there was a thread on Metafilter written by a woman who works as a party princess, talking about what her job is like. That is, she gets dressed up as Cinderella, Rapunzel or so on, then arrives at the birthday girl’s house to direct games, tell stories and otherwise let the good times roll. Her tales of how much the little girls love princesses are hilarious, and they’re accompanied by some adorable, funny illustrations. (They’ve also made me wonder why I haven’t found a good way to make millions off my paperdolls. The dresses seem to be a major selling point with this whole princess adoration thing.) They’re posted on the Something Awful forums, so you can’t easily read through them all at once, but here are links to the ones currently available. one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Since I’ve been enjoying these stories so much I thought I’d make a paperdoll for them, based off the name she uses on Twitter, Assassin Princess. What kind of outfit might an assassin princess wear? I imagine she is going to the ball not to win Prince Charming’s heart but to stab it. In such a lovely dark gown, snatching the prince’s attention away from a simpering beauty in pink is hardly a challenge. A few dances later, they are standing on a secluded balcony, making small talk about the moon and stars, and he leans in for a kiss… Unfortunately the poofy skirt hides several pockets, one of which holds a dagger. As he’s laying on the ground, the last thing he sees is the *sparklesparkle* of the sequins on the swishy hem of her skirt.

poll by twiigs.com