Liana’s paperdoll blog

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

Brian and I went to go see Wall-E yesterday; these red jumpsuits are what the humans on board the Axiom wear. (And don’t forget, blue is the new red.) I don’t remember exactly how they look, and it’s impossible to find pictures of the humans, so it might be slightly off. I truly enjoyed it; it was less preachy and not as cruel about fat people as I had feared it might be. For one, it’s not as simple as “everyone would be better without any STUFF” — Wall-E treasured some of the things he found, using them creatively and learning from them. I don’t have a problem with too much stuff, myself — two moves in seven months will do that to you — so I didn’t go home with a burning determination to reduce my wasteful ways, although I do want to get my compost bin started… The heart of the story, of course, was Wall-E and Eve (and the other robots, too, were a lot more important than the humans — but I can’t very well make an Eve outfit, just cut out an oval, give her a monitor face and little blue eyes…) and that was really quite sweet. Brian, of course, nitpicked the mechanics of space travel, but that is Brian. The movie made me quite sad that the apartment landscaping people weed-whacked our growing flower bed that morning, but in the spirit of Encouraging the Green Growing Things, we went right back out and bought some more seeds…

Click for the doll.

Yay, I’m recovering! I’m still coughing like crazy and tire out pretty easily, but I can taste things again and my ears are almost starting to be normal again. In celebration, a couple of the paperdoll pets from the old Boutique. The dragon was sort of a mascot for a while, too, gracing the front page, while the brown critter is a baby rat creature from the comic book Bone.

So I was looking at my blog stats today and noticed a new blog, and the paperdoll website done by the blog’s owner. Annissa, I had no idea you drew such wonderful paperdolls! You all have got to take a look at them. The newest set is based on flowers and is fabulous (I love the Iris dress the best). And look - she has a whole book’s worth of clothes for Sense and Sensibility. My favorite, of course, is Princess Liana. I wish I could read her stories! There are a lot of other sets, too, with beautiful details and designs. You can use Google Translate to get an idea of the text; the translation software isn’t really accurate, but it gives you an idea of what the sets are about.

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

For Annissa! :)

I’m still a little sick, so it’s not the best one I’ve ever done, but it’s a good start on the path to doing a paperdoll every day again… Anyways, this is a redrawing of one of the 1800s regency gowns I did for the Boutique. I must have based it off of something, but it was ten years ago, I have no idea what it was based on…

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

I’ve been sick with bronchitis and ear infections since the 13th. As it is now the 23rd, and I am just now getting to the point where I feel better, if I don’t stand up and move around too much, and I may have to go to the doctor again tomorrow if this annoying bubble in my ears doesn’t go away, well, I am a little grumpy about the whole thing. Brian (who caught it from me just in time for Startup Weekend, the poor thing) and I have gone through bottles and bottles of ginger ale and I am quite thoroughly sick of Amy’s no-chicken noodle soup. Worst of all, my classes got reorganized since I was out for so long. I feel depressed and adrift and desperately unhappy, which is hard enough to feel without adding congestion, a persistent cough, ear infections and fatigue.

For Anna I drew a couple of evil fairy outfits when I was feeling down about things, which turned out to be some of my favorites from that series, so I thought it would be therapeutic to draw one for this series too. This fairy spreads illness and disease, and as you can see she is rather less restrained by her clothes than malice or bad luck. She’s quite efficient, beautiful in that consumptive way, and very fond of hideous shades of green. She seems to visit me more often than I would like. Maybe if I picture her and put such energy in her beloved shades of puce and chartreuse it will appease her, and then I can wake up refreshed, breathe deeply and take a nice, long walk.

Click for the doll.

I’m not dead yet, although I really feel close to it right now. Here I had a glorious summer weekend coming up and I had all sorts of things planned, and then I caught whatever bug has been going around the place where I teach on Friday. Goodbye new kitten, goodbye tomato plants, goodbye movie date, goodbye paperdolling time, hello sitting in bed with a stack of comic books and glasses of ginger ale carefully refilled by my dear Brian. I still feel awful, but I don’t think there’s much competition for doctor’s appointments at campus clinics in the morning in the middle of summer, so at least I shouldn’t have to wait long to get in.

The best thing about this whole long miserable weekend was that I found that Castle Waiting is back. Expect to see a paperdoll from this series at some point, because it’s one of my favorite stories ever.

But in the meantime, I’m still miserable, so today there are only ten-year old wedding dresses. The good news is that I’m getting used to this whole teaching thing, and I’m not overdoing it anymore with the teaching job and the TOEFL job and the tutoring, so I want to get back to drawing soon…

oh, and I found the dresses that go with my blonde teenager doll. They were in a zip file titled “pd-useless-1.zip” and I know I am the harshest critic of my own work but, really, they weren’t THAT bad, what was I thinking? anyways, I’ll post them soon!

Click for the doll.

Faith asked me to post — I think — this doll and her outfits. (I don’t think I did any others that fit the bill, is this the right one?) I drew her towards the end of the Paperdoll Boutique era, sometime in 2000. (Those butterfly clips were real cool when I was in high school.) My intention was to start off by redrawing all of the boutique dresses for her. Hah! Yeah, I got real far on that one. This is the “sneak preview” version, so I left in the text I added.

She never would have made a good mermaid, but she did have a handful of outfits — which is actually where I run into trouble. You see, I have a way of storing data on my computer that makes my husband cry. (Example: one of the most precious files on my computer is stored in nested folders named like so: Liana -> Projects -> Liana-old -> Text -> tempjunk. Why? I couldn’t tell you.) I’ve got zip files with unexplained names, and who knows how many files that open with programs I haven’t had for years. I like to pretend that someday I’ll sort everything out, but in reality I’m going to have to write in my will: “Burn my computer upon my death, it’s beyond redemption.” So, I know the rest of her outfits are there on my computer somewhere, because I’ve seen them within the past three months. But I don’t remember how I found them, and I couldn’t find them today. I’ll post them when I do find them, though.

Brian says he’ll help me find them, so all is not lost. “I’ll create a GUI using Visual Basic to see if we can track an IP address,” he says.

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting — I’ve been busy with some other things, and a little nervous about my new job, which I start tomorrow (teaching ESL classes). I should actually have some time once things calm down, though…

Random Liana trivia: morning glories are my favorite flower.