White Dress with Blue Tunic and Forget-Me-Nots for September

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Finally, another birthday dress! I want to fill in the months I never got around to this year as well, but for now I will start at the current date. September’s birth flower (one of them, at least) is the forget-me-not, and its birth stone (again, one of them) is sapphire, making it easy to pick the dress’ predominant color. Adding the necklace on top of it all was kind of gilding the lily, but oh well.

It is only September 4th, but I’m starting to think about October. Last year I did a month of Halloween costumes, and I had so much fun I’m thinking of doing another theme month. I could do another month of random costumes like I did last year, or I could do something more narrowly focused. For example, Brian suggested a month of famous witch costumes – the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch, Willow, the Grand High Witch, Minerva McGonagall and so on. If anyone else has any other ideas, leave a comment! I’ve got all month to think about it.

Green Dress with White Tunic and Daisies for April

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So I did a birthday dress for January and then proceeded to ignore February and March — I’m very sorry, anyone with birthdays in those months who was waiting for one. (I’ll do them this month, since belated birthday presents are better than nothing, right?) This is a dress for April, since one of the birth flowers for this month is the daisy. Like January’s, it’s intended to be vaguely angelic, but not based in any particular theology — I think of the birthday dresses as like those little statues you can buy for a kid every year where the characters get older, actually.

January’s drives me crazy, because the white part on the red skirt, there were supposed to be flowers in there, and I got fed up with the dress and it was late and I never drew them in. Maybe I’ll dig it out of my box and put them in, then it won’t bug me… This one I like a lot, though, so that makes up for many failures.

Yeah, no April Fool’s joke for you this year, sorry. Maybe next year!

Mermaid Monday #11: Mermaid Mystic Apprentice with Light Green Tunic and White Tail

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Sometimes, a mystic will take on an apprentice. It’s tremendously dangerous to be a mystic’s pupil; the discipline is inherently hazardous to one’s health and sanity, and callous mystics often use their apprentices as guinea pigs. In addition to that, the apprentice shaves his or her head, shuns all family and friends, usually makes some form of offering to the mystic and wears a light green tunic to signify the death of his or her old life. This mermaid, with her bald head, light green tunic and white tail, would be a creepy figure to most regular mermaids, but she spends all of her time studying alone anyways, trying to avoid the fate of the apprentice she inherited her tunic from. She gave up the natural color of her tail (a brilliant ultramarine) to study under her master, so she is guaranteed not to skip out and establish her own reputation as a mystic until she has the ability to replace it. (Temporarily changing the color of a tail is not that hard, but permanent color is a tricky proposition.)

Tomorrow starts the Wiki Dress parade. Expect dinosaurs.

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.

Pink and Red Fairy Dress from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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Honestly, I wasn’t quite feeling the whole paperdolling thing today after having three starts to another outfit go bad, so I decided to redraw one of the old Boutique fairy outfits. I’m not really thrilled with it, but it’s better than not posting anything at all…