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.

Khaki Trench Coat with Green Dress and Grey Boots in honor of Different Chairs and justweather.com

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So my husband’s business is called Different Chairs, and he does a lot of different things, but chief among them is web development using Django. He has been helping put together a new weather site, JustWeather.com, which just officially launched the other day. What’s so great about another weather site, you ask? Well, it shows real-time, helpful weather information, it has great animated maps that you can enlarge and it doesn’t have a lot of other information cluttering up the screen — just weather, right? Frankly, it has more weather information than most decent humans want to know, and my dear husband has been living and breathing weather for months now. (There’s a reason our new cat is named Radar. She narrowly escaped being called “Haircast.”)

So, in honor of Brian and the weather site, Sylvia and Iris can now brave weather in a cute short khaki trench coat, although you wouldn’t want to brave too much weather in a skirt like that, I guess!

The Good Queen’s undead nemesis seems to be catching up…

One Last Dress from My Fair Lady and Two Dresses from Titanic from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

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My apologies, my time management skills have been lacking the last couple of days! So, here are a couple of Boutique dresses instead, and I will draw something new tomorrow. I’m glad I worked on the Boutique so diligently all that time ago, it’ll be a while before I run out of things to post. Anyways, these are the green dress from My Fair Lady and the beaded gown and boarding dress from Titanic.

The other poll is still going to be open for a few days, but I also want to move on to the next batch…

Two More Dresses from My Fair Lady from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

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So today I hardly know what to do with myself without a month-long theme. I did make a couple of fixes to the Halloween costumes — the gypsy now has a little bandanna, and the scarecrow has a hat. Plus, the pirate costume legs didn’t work all that well, so I edited that, and also edited the mermaid a bit to fit better. (The nurse also needs editing, so don’t print her out just yet.) Since I didn’t draw anything new, here are some Boutique dresses from My Fair Lady.

Janel tagged me for a meme a while back, and since it is only six things about myself, my apologies for putting it off so long!

1) I speak Japanese at a lower-intermediate level; higher when I’ve been studying, lower when I haven’t been. I feel like I haven’t forgotten most of what I’ve learned, but I need to study to draw it out, so when I haven’t been studying (like recently) it’s not really a skill I can count on. My favorite part is studying kanji, and my very, very long-term goal is to be able to read the Tale of Genji.

2) I can’t really draw anything besides paper doll clothes. Just look at Sylvia and Iris’ feet! (Or, you know, please don’t look at their feet.) Before our cat Maggie died, I was practicing drawing human figures more, but afterwards I lost the desire to draw for a while and then I never got back into it. Now, I’d like to get a second sketchbook and practice drawing hands, feet, all the things I can’t stand.

3) My husband and I have been together for a decade, married for five years; we met online through a website that I had when I was sixteen and he was seventeen. We have the sort of life where, if you filmed part of it for a movie, it would have to be some sort of horror or suspense movie where bad things happen to us, because the first few scenes of our lives are so wonderful you just know bad luck is bound to come into our lives. So far nothing really bad has happened yet, and I’ve quit worrying that the Sword of Damocles is an inch away.

4) I’m a morning person (while my husband would happily wake up at noon and sleep at three or four) and I do my best work in the morning — but I start work at 8:30, so usually I draw after getting off work. And man, if I don’t have a decent idea and the beginnings of a sketch at 8, 9 PM, that’s the time when I post a Boutique dress or two and call it a day…

5) I have been a horrible hermit this year; I have a couple of good friends who moved away, and my parents moved to Washington State, plus I work at home! I’m an introvert, so it doesn’t really bother me, but I think next year I’ll try to be more social…

6) I can’t tell my right from my left easily, I have to make an L with my left hand to know which is which. My mom used to think this was something I should learn not to do, and she bothered me about it when I was driving with her in the car. I still do it, and when we’re together she drives. Someday I may have to drive her around, and then I think I will have to blindfold her.

I’m running out of time for tonight, so I’ll decide who to tag later…

I extended this poll a few days:

Halloween Costume Series Day 18: Evil Queen in Purple, Green and Silver Gown with Ruby Necklace

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Apologies for not putting up one yesterday, our internet connection gave out…

So I sketched this one out thinking “evil queen.” I drew it thinking “evil queen.” I was filling in the pattern on the poison-green dress with glee thinking “totally evil queen, heh heh heh.” And then my husband comes along and says, “ooh, it’s very oceany.”

No, I say, it’s “evil-y.”

“Oceany,” he says. “Like an ocean queen or something.”

So I put the vote to you, paperdoll fans. Who’s right?

By the way, cut a line right down the middle of the collar to make it fit the doll. I didn’t add something indicating that on the doll, sorry!

Halloween Costume Series Day 16: Black Velvet Cat Costume with Keyhole Neckline and Green Belled Collar

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I haven’t had a real femme fatale this Halloween, so this black cat costume turned out a little bit short. Brian thinks her collar and shoes are catnip colored, but I just like gree//////////////////////////////loooooooo[

CAT LIKE TYPING DETECTED

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:

Three Halloween Costumes (Clown, Dragon, Gypsy) from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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As it happens, I’m entirely out of paper — I’m going to pick up a new sketchbook tomorrow or maybe later on today, but in the meantime the first of October passes without a single costume, which is very depressing. So, pardon me for falling back on my ten-year old boutique dresses once again! Here is a clown costume, a dragon costume and a gypsy costume for my ten-year old dolls. (Also, my devil costume and angel costume have links to the original Boutique versions as well.)

Look, an October poll!

Dragon Pet and Rat Creature Pet from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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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.

Revision of a Boutique 1800s Regency Gown in Sea Green with White Lace

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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…