Tribal Belly Dance Costume with Green Gold-Trimmed Choli, Red and Gold Hipscarf with Gold Coins and Full Black Gold-Trimmed Skirt

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So I started a belly dance class (beledi, to be precise) a few weeks back. Unsurprisingly, it’s always been something that appealed to me (fancy veils! shiny coins! etc.) but I’m ridiculously uncoordinated, disconnected from my body, overweight, quite self-conscious, can’t tell my right from my left, and in every way am the type of person who should stay well away from dance classes. But once I got over the abject terror involved in stepping into the studio and completing the first class, I was hooked. Hip shimmies are a lot of fun if you’ve got plenty of hip to put into them, for one thing, and the movements are something I can usually do once I watch closely and practice for a bit. Of course I’ll never be a “dancer” in any way; people say “just let go” and “just follow the music” and “don’t think about it” and apparently I walk around in a near constant state of tenseness because all that is impossible for me. In class I feel like I’m translating everything the teacher does into a flowchart for me to follow and when I do something with my body that I can’t explain with words, like pivoting or this one veil move, it’s really quite unsettling for me.

Anyways, as far as I know (and keep in mind I’m a total noob) there are two styles of costumes, cabaret and tribal, cabaret being the highly beaded bra and skirt look and tribal going for a more ethnic, fantasy look. I really like the tribal look, so that’s what I went with for this paper doll. She’s got a green choli, a red hipscarf and a black full skirt, all trimmed with gold and gold coins. I covet the choli I drew for my doll, but I’m not so sure I’d have the courage to wear it!

At the moment, the vampire has pulled ahead… there’s still time for the Good Queen to come back ahead though.

Halloween Costume Series Day 11: Gypsy Girl’s White Tunic with Purple Embroidery, Violet-Blue Paisley Sash, and Pink and Purple Belled Full Skirt

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Violeta claims she makes up all her fortunes like everyone else and it’s not her fault there’s so much bad luck in this wicked world, but all the same her family won’t let her talk in the future tense. She can never get past “I will” or “Tomorrow” before one of her sisters tackles her and claps a hand over her mouth, none too gently either. They resent her because as the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter of the legendary gypsy mystic Simza, she was supposed to inherit the family powers, and since they were all brought into the world to facilitate her arrival there should have been some payoff for them. Instead, they switch off days shadowing her, protecting their family, their friends, for all they know the world from this lightning rod of misery, their uncanny and dangerous sister. Violeta floated the idea once of billing herself as a sort of goddess of curses, and her mother would have thought it a terrific joke for another of her daughters, Zora perhaps, to make up theatrical fake curses and fleece all those who sought to bring harm on others. Violeta, however, seemed to be at the mercy of some demon that hijacked her tongue when she foretold the future, and her mother had better sense than to try to profit off of such a thing. Even the fortunes she told that sounded positive brought only wretchedness. (Would that she had never told Carmen about that darkly handsome rich man!)

Forbidden contact with the future and silenced by the tender ministrations of her sisters, she pours her energy into other things, trying her best to walk straight on a twisted road. She paints and repaints intricate and vivid patterns on her family’s wagons, she knows all the names and uses of everything that grows in the forests, and she makes up wild, violent dances, stamping the ground with the intensity of a curse.

New poll, and rather a silly one. I drew from my Halloween pile, but all my paperdolls are potential warriors here, so if you want Calamity Jane’s trusty shotgun I’m not going to stop you.

Halloween Costume Series Day 5: Green Princess Gown with Pink Rose Trim and Gold Lace

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So what if “princess” is possibly the least imaginative costume for anyone past second grade? It’s pretty, and if there’s anything I like in this world it is pretty dresses. I believe, now, that I may be the foremost non-Disney expert on what makes a dress princess-worthy, for these are the kinds of things one thinks about when one draws lots of paper dolls.

I don’t know much about the owner of this dress except that she does like her roses, and I would be surprised if she cultivates them herself as the owner of this pink princess gown does. No, this princess is a bit of a terror, and she insisted that her dress should lend her a sort of mature innocence, that it should be both heavy and light, serious and frilly, and highly becoming to her porcelain complexion and rich brown hair. It it is no coincidence that her dressmaker took a very long vacation after its completion. But this, I think, is not the kind of princess to worry too much about the anguish of such people. I for one hope the dressmaker got far enough away not to hear about the princess saying, at her next ball, “Oh, this old thing? You like it? It’s just an old rag I had lying around in my closet.”

The veil should be cut between the gold part and the white fabric, such that the doll’s head can be slipped through and the gold band goes around the forehead while the veil flutters behind.

Take my new poll: