Two Fantasy Princess Gowns from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

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Sorry — let it get too late again! You can blame our new kitty, pictures of which can be seen on my Flickr stream. Anyways, here are two of the gowns from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique.

Here’s the poll..

Halloween Costume Series Day 14: Christine Daae’s Star Princess Masquerade Costume In Black, Blue and White with Black Domino Mask

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Kathleen asked, earlier this month, that I do one of Christine Daae’s outfits from the Phantom of the Opera, which was a timely request because I recently got the musical soundtrack from the library. (One of the sad things about the times when I am not drawing is that I must mourn the Outfits which Could Have Been. I listened to the original text many months ago, and then I forced Brian to sit with the recent movie version with me. That he endured as a proof of his love, but he was much more enthusastiac about the next Phantom spinoff we watched, The Phantom of the Paradise. Tagline: “He sold his soul for rock’n'roll.” Anyways, I do regret that I didn’t do a paperdoll series of these Phantoms and Christines. But I digress.) So since I got the soundtrack, I’ve been singing along — portions of my brain which went on strike during geometry class apparently devoted themselves thoroughly to memorizing the whole musical, it seems — even getting Brian in on the fun, singing Phantom duets along with him to which we make up the words. He’s joined in with me a couple times as I trilled “Music of the Night” in the shower, scaring the living daylights out of me each time (”didn’t you ever see Psycho?” I asked) and gamely followed along with Raoul’s part to “All I Ask Of You.” (”How can anyone LISTEN to this? No one will FIND you? Your fears are far BEHIND you?” he asks. “Just be quiet and sing it,” I reply perfectly logically and reasonably.)

Of course, for Halloween I must do a Masquerade dress, the first step of which was blithely breaking the “no research” rule once again. The movie dress was a pink concoction; I read somewhere it was supposed to represent the influence of the scarlet-garbed Phantom, but I personally didn’t think it quite worked that way — I thought it just looked too conventional, kind of like “Totally Ingenue Barbie!” although certainly it was very beautiful. The stage outfit was rather more what I would prefer, for a masquerade ball — a blue and pink silver-starred ballet outfit, referred to as her “Star Princess” dress. Here you can see a picture of the costume design sketch, some images from the stage and a fan’s reproduction of the dress, and this forum post includes a discussion of the dress and links to pictures of it from different productions. I liked the shape, but didn’t want to just copy one of them, and so looked to the original text for further inspiration. Now, the thing I should have quite liked to paperdoll from the original text was the Phantom’s “immense red-velvet cloak, which trailed along the floor like a king’s train; and on this cloak was embroidered, in gold letters, which every one read and repeated aloud, ‘Don’t touch me! I am Red Death stalking abroad!’” But as for Christine, the only thing described is her black domino mask, and re-reading that scene, it is such a very dark time for her… So here she is, as my Star Princess for the masquerade, but not the stars giving way to dawn as on the stage; the night has laid claim to this Christine.

We are coming to the end of the zombie slaughter poll, so vote…

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:

Two Halloween Costumes (Princess and Cat) from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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So, I do all my drawings with Prismacolor colored pencils, and I almost always use a special pencil called the colorless blender for the finishing touch. Essentially it smooths the colors together; sometimes it makes the colors vibrant, sometimes it makes color gradients look perfect, sometimes it actually changes the colors. It’s what makes mermaid tails so pretty, basically. And mine wore down to a little pencil stub, and I thought I had a replacement but I don’t. (I think I need to start buying them by the bushel.) So for tonight I’m just going to put up some more Boutique costumes and tomorrow go and get another blender pencil or two so I can continue the paperdoll outfit I was working on. Anyways, here we have a princess costume and a cat costume. Tonight’s costume was to be a princess gown, actually, but then I ran out of colorless blender… look forwards to it tomorrow!

I made a new poll:

Esmeralda’s Red Dancing Dress (Disney Princess Jewels Series Collection, Liana Remix)

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So Esmeralda got two votes from my call for non-Disney princess characters to draw in the “Jewels” collection style (and I’ve been convinced I must do something with Hyacinth Hippo, incidentally, but not today), so that makes her the winner. I decided that although I like her normal outfit, it was too practical to princessize, so I looked at the dress she wears to dance. In truth, my version is still not glitzed up enough to be a proper part of the Jewels line; if I was sewing a real dress, the proper next step would be to hand it to a team of 7-year-olds along with sequins, laces, a Bedazzler and ropes of pearls and let them go nuts. (I still can’t find any pictures online of the Jewels version of the Disney Princesses, so click here for a scan of my Kleenex box, showing Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Belle in full Jewels regalia, if a little water damaged. Now, you’ll see why I say mine is too plain — and why I think Sleeping Beauty is wearing a Venus fly-trap.)

Two Fantasy Princess Gowns from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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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…

Pink and White Princess Gown (based off of Janel’s Pink Birthday Dress)

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This is based off of a dress that Janel made for her daughter’s birthday. After yesterday’s Calamity Jane, I needed to draw something extremely cute!

In my imagination, this version of the dress belongs to a young princess who loves pretty things, but isn’t prissy or as high-maintenance as a lot of princesses are these days. She loves being outdoors and she especially loves gardening. She’s growing tomatoes and wildflowers now, and she feels like she works hard to make her little garden grow, although that’s kind of a pleasant fiction created by the indulgent head gardener. I like her and would write more about her, but I didn’t finish this dress until it was late, and I’m tired, so she will have to wait for another dress…

If you remember a different shade of pink for this dress, it’s not just your imagination: when I first posted it, I posted the first version, which scanned very poorly (the color changed, I lost a lot of detail on the white parts, and so on). This version is closer to my original drawing.

Princess Garnet’s White Gown from Final Fantasy IX

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Brian finished Final Fantasy IX recently, and since I’ve always loved the gown that Garnet a.k.a. Dagger wears at the beginning and end of the game, I just had to paperdoll it. For cutting this one out, it ought to work to cut the sleeve around the ends, and then both arm and sleeve go above the skirt. I am tempted to do a “Fancy Gowns of Final Fantasy Games” series…

Once again, Verithin pencils to the rescue with those vines. I love those things.

Don’t forget to vote for the mermaid tail for next Monday:

Blue and gold princess gown (based on a gown from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique)

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I can almost hear my mom now. “She said her midterm was on Thursday, why isn’t anything up yet?”Poor Mom. ;) This is just an update of one of my old Boutique fantasy gowns. This was one of my favorites; there was something about the blue that I liked. I still remember which blues I used originally (ultramarine and Copenhagen blue)… but arguably I was better at doing gold back then.

Check it out, University of Texas has a paper doll collection. They have a few dolls and outfits online, too, representations of women who donated to the accompanying textile collection; I totally dig December’s Christmas tree dress.