Recolored Regency Gown in Bright Colors

A lavender 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 turquoise 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 pink 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.I didn’t finish the dress I meant to have up today (the contest winner), so for now, I will present the recoloring chosen by one of the two winners of my Oscar contest, dannyscotland! Technically, it was chosen by her 5-year old daughter, and it did turn out to be vibrant. She wrote:

I have consulted with my ‘assistant’ a.k.a. daughter, and she would like to have you color the Valentine’s Day Regency Gown. For five years old, she’s pretty specific, so please feel free to alter as you see fit. :-) And thanks for understanding. She (and I, I guess) would love to see turquoise gloves and bottom ruffle, a pink shawl, lavender dress (the body of the dress), red roses, and pink draping over the bottom ruffle, kind of like it is now. Maybe it could be a different shade of pink?

Dannyscotland, I hope you and your daughter like it! It was fun for me, because the finished dress is quite different from the original, but it does some fun things in and of itself. The blue of the ruffle actually complements the forget-me-nots, and with the lavender background, you can see that there is a very subtle swirl pattern on the fabric, which was pretty hard to see on the earlier version.

The top part of a blue gown with a delicate darker blue vine and white flower pattern and puffed sleeves. There are a line of pearls at the neckline and a wide gold belt with pearls.But wait – that’s not all there is today! RLC of Paper Thin Personas has been doing interviews with paper doll bloggers lately, and for this month, she interviewed me! Check out the interview for my thoughts on why I love paper dolls, how I created the pose for the new doll series and whether I prefer sparkly things with some shine or shiny things with some sparkle. Plus, I did a blue princess gown exclusively for RLC’s site! If you’d like to see and download the full dress, you’ll have to check out the interview.

Come back next week for the 1912 gown with colors and patterns chosen by my husband! (I’ll give you a hint: Beetles.) I’ll do the poll next week, too. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest for site updates, paperdoll thoughts and very pretty opals. If you enjoy my work, I’d also appreciate your support through Patreon.


December Birthday Dress in White and Blue with Narcissus and Silver and Turquoise Belt

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

Yes, for once I’m prompt with the birthday dress. That’s mostly because I didn’t get home until fairly late and all of my other ideas were fairly labor-intensive… but perhaps also because I rather unfairly favor December. Why? Well, for one thing, my own birthday is in December! But when, you might wonder? Let’s make it a contest… Winner gets to tell me how to color one of my black-and-white dresses, as usual!

When is Liana’s birthday?
Rules as always:
1) If you’ve already won this year, please don’t enter. (Music contest winners are OK to enter a black-and-white coloring contest though. By the way, I intend to do those this month, and I’m sorry to have gotten so off track!)
2) One guess per person per day.
3) If no one gets the exact date by noon PST, December 6th, I’ll pick the closest guess.
4) Those of you who know me well enough to already know are disqualified.

Update: Ana guessed right: my birthday was December 3rd. Sorry I couldn’t confirm it earlier, I was out of town (the post on Saturday was a scheduled post).

Prismacolors used: Black, Indigo Blue, Cool Grey 10%, 20%, 30%, 50%, 70%, Sunburst Yellow, Goldenrod, Dark Umber, Light Aqua, Aquamarine, Sky Blue Light, Blue Slate, White, Verithin Warm Grey 20%, Cool Grey 20%, Orange, colorless blender, Sakura white gel pen


December Birthday Dress and February Birthday Dress from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

Click for the doll.

It wasn’t so much that I was uninspired today as it was that I spent a couple of hours on trazy’s requested coloring of the 1700s dress and then screwed it up, and even though I took some stabs at doing something easy after that, nothing quite seemed to work. So here are two dresses from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique, which was the paper doll site that I ran around ten years ago, when I was in high school. This is the December birthday dress, with turquoise and white poinsettias, and the February one, with amythests and violets.


Halloween Costume Series Day 8: Cleopatra White Linen Egyptian Dress with Blue Lotus Pattern, with Jeweled Collar and Red Sash

Click for larger version; click for the list of dolls.

I kind of broke my “no research all month” rule for this one, but it is not hard for me to find an excuse to look at ancient Egyptian clothes. This one is vaguely accurate, although I think the lotus pattern may be over the top, there’s no melting perfume cone and the clothes should be sheer anyways, for full royal style. That’s even further than today’s ‘sexy Cleopatra’ revelers want to go… I used to want to be an Egyptologist, and I’ve even got a book or two on learning hieroglyphs in the other room. Then I discovered Japanese and kanji. No kidding.

If you’ve already taken my poll and answered “obscure costumes,” can you leave a comment and tell me what kinds of costumes you’re talking about? I’m very curious now, since that category’s done so well. I expected that sexy costumes would be low on the list for this crowd, but I wasn’t expecting that no one would choose ‘pop culture’ for a costume. What, no Jedis in this group? No Jokers? I thought everyone wanted to be the Joker this year…