Lady Clarisse d’Cagliostro’s Second Wedding Gown from Studio Ghibli’s Castle of Cagliostro

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So I adore the Ghibli movies, and since I also adore the original Arsène Lupin it can hardly be a surprise I love the Castle of Cagliostro, the collision of his grandson Lupin III and Hayao Miyazaki. Brian and I watched it again the other day, and it’s definitely one of my favorites, full of action and Lupin getting the better of people. Clarisse here gets two wedding dresses, and I opted for the crown of the first and the dress of the second, because I can’t pull off the thing she wears that covers all her hair unless my paperdoll fans are willing to mutilate their copies of Iris and Sylvia to make it fit.

I have a lot of movies coming up in my future, so tell me what Ghibli movies you like and I’ll paperdoll them a bit…

Oz’s Female Form From The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

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After the eighteen hour exercise in class consciousness, eternally frustrated romance and parade of death that was North and South (I tease, I tease — actually I really enjoyed it, but it was somewhat hard to take at times), I thought that perhaps I would enjoy something lighter. So I’m now listening to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Of course I’ve seen the movie, but I’ve never read the book before. I wasn’t sure about the paperdolling opportunities — Dorothy is too young, the Good Witch of the book is Munchkin-sized — and thought that I might be doing a Wicked Witch of the West outfit from this one. (And I may yet do so…) But there’s a part where Oz appears to the Scarecrow as a beautiful fairy, and the description says that she “was dressed in green silk gauze and wore upon her flowing green locks a crown of jewels. Growing from her shoulders were wings, gorgeous in color and so light that they fluttered if the slightest breath of air reached them.”

Now, after years of paperdolling, I cannot possibly read a paragraph like that one without thinking “Bingo!”…

So here is my interpretation of Oz’s female representation. I must confess, too, that if this hadn’t shown up I’d be drawing one of the Emerald City court ladies. I haven’t drawn anything green for a while, and it’s my favorite color!