Liana’s paperdoll blog

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Here are two of the fantasy gowns from my old Boutique site. The blue and white one seems to have a sort of military character to it, to me, like a Valkyrie ballgown, and I like the red on the other one…

I’ve been thinking about what constitutes a “Princess” gown, mostly because the three-pack of Kleenex my husband brought home when we were sick includes one box with the Disney Princess girls on it. (He was pretty sick too at this point, I doubt he thought anything but “wife needs kleenex, kleenex exists in these boxes, these boxes are available for purchase, go go go”) All of them have had some significant wardrobe additions since the Princess line came out: I’ve seen these gold dress variations a few times, and the Kleenex box has something similar to that, although the dresses are the original colors. Everything else is changed: every inch of fabric that can have gold scrolls or ropes of jewels or lace and embroidery now does, and there are other embellishments such as jeweled capes, lacy ruffs, tiaras and more detailed sleeves. Sleeping Beauty’s looks like she’s got a Venus flytrap on her shoulders, in my opinion, and I wish I could find a picture of this so everyone could agree with me. The box says that it’s the newest Disney Princess collection, “Jewels,” but I can’t find any pictures.

Anyways, I must admit that it delights my inner 10-year old, but it made me think of some of Amy Mebberson’s Disney drawings of the characters that didn’t make the core Princess group cut, such as Kida and Eilonwy — here’s one of the “Non Princess Club and here’s Disney’s Forgotten Princesses So I thought it would be fun to draw a dress for one of the girls left out of the Princess club in this poofy Bedazzled “Jewels” style… I’m not going to post a poll since there are so many options, but leave a comment and tell me who you think should have their dress redone!

Looking at the Non-Princess Club, I think it’d be fun to do a dress from the Sprite from Fantasia, but I’m open to suggestions on this one…

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For those of us in the USA - happy 4th of July! (And for those of you outside the USA, do enjoy the fourth of July anyways…) These are old 4th themed shirts (plus a pair of khaki capris) from the Boutique.

We haven’t seen any fireworks, but I might try to talk Brian into going to see the parade downtown…

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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…

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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.

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I guess I’m not quite ready to return to that once-a-day ideal with this headache. That’s what you get for reading essays full-time! It’s too bad because now I’m all excited about paperdolling. But that’s OK, I’ll do one tomorrow… or Wednesday, perhaps, when I have a day off. But I’ll try for tomorrow!

These are the final outfits from the 1800 collection from my old site, Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique. I believe that the green caped confection is a reproduction of a bathing suit, although I don’t know what the reference was for that and can’t give any more precise details, as it was something like ten years ago after all.

Here, too, is this week’s poll… So in preparation for the plane rides I downloaded a bunch of short audiobooks off of Librivox, rather at random, and put them on my iPod, but I didn’t listen to all of them. Here are the candidates: what should I listen to next? (Keep in mind a paperdoll usually comes from whatever I’m listening to ;) )
The Big Bow Mystery, Carmilla, The Enchanted Castle, Otto of the Silver Hand, The Lone Star Ranger.

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I’m still on vacation (will be until Saturday) and trust me, I’ll have a lot to say about it when I’m back home! In the meantime…

I drew this hobbit girl for my mom a few years ago, I think for her birthday. My mom is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and we both pretty much agree, if we were in that world we would make excellent hobbits. (Second breakfast? Yes please) So here’s a little hobbit girl with four outfits.

Anyways, I’ll be back home on Saturday, but between the red-eye flight home and the time zone changes, I might be too loopy to post anything for a day or two…

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Two more from the 1800s set from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique…

By the time you all read this, I’ll be in Washington State visiting my family. But I intend to have lots of time for paperdolling again!

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Here are some more from the 1800s set — bloomers and a rather fanciful ball gown. (I remember drawing that one: I ran out of paper.) Funny how the bloomers used to be so scandalous…

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Thank you everyone for the kind thoughts about our dear Maggie. It was a horrible time for all of us and all your thoughtful comments really made me feel better about her. The apartment seems so much different without her trotting around… Harume seems as placid as ever (we don’t call her Goldfish Brain for nothing) but she’s become more vocal, always meowing over and over. She doesn’t seem sad, though, but just chatty, so I guess she’s all right.

I’ve had a half-finished dress for a while now, so I decided to restart the process with some Boutique gowns… These are from the 1800s (though when I drew them I didn’t make any finer distinctions of time, so I forget exactly when they are supposed to be from). I put them up in honor of the kind link from Jane Austen Today, and also because I just finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and regency gowns are on my mind. I actually remember exactly where I was when I was drawing the gowns in this set: working in the computer lab at Tri-C back in high school, a job which entailed fixing jammed printers, cleaning up and signing people in and out. So I could sit at the desk by the door and have some downtime to draw, and I just thought I had it made!