Tag: Marchessa

Where have I been? So terribly busy! Good stuff, but no time to tend the garden here despite having prepared a buffer of material in advance. But my schedule is opening up and hopefully I can gt back on track in some fashion in the coming week (pun intended).

To get us back in the mood, here are some jewel-toned gowns from Marchessa! Ifu’s dress on the left is fairly accurate to the original color, but Xia’s on the right was actually that pale bright yellow that’s all the rage right now. I decided to change it since Xia’s Oscar’s dress was already that shade (and it’s a color I’m not that fond of). Anyway, I much prefer this rich golden tone instead.

I also realize that I desperately need to make more hairstyles for the women. I’ve still got a handful of plates to post that have been done since March or early April (I forget). So it might be a while before I get to offer up more hair options for these lovely runway models.

I also have failed to make a decision about what to post next. I fell behind on the Klondike paper dolls in the last couple of weeks, but I might be getting back to them. Also, I still have lingering Star Wars dolls to post. I’m just so disorganized.

As I said, though, things are settling down. Hopefully I can focus on what I want to do and get some regular posting going on here again. I hate falling out of sync with this blog because it’s hard getting the momentum going again.

But I’m going to try to post at least a couple of times this week. Even if it’s stuff about paper dolls and not actual paper dolls themselves. I’m no good at “how I do stuff” kind of posts, but I can definitely share things I love that other people do!

As always with this series, if you want to make suggestions or recommend a designer, I’m game for that. Couture is certainly a bottomless pit of possibilities!

Next up on the catwalk: something a little more “Springtime” for Lonan and Niall!

[click this link or the black & white plate  to download a printable .pdf]

Marchessa has so many beautiful dresses it was almost impossible to choose. But I narrowed it down to six (for now). I might go back and pick up a couple more.

Plate 12 shows the first three choices. There are two here for Xia and one for Ifu. On Plate 14 there will be two for Ifu and one for Xia, so it will even out.

I also really meant to make more fancy hairstyles and ones with fancy earrings for these red carpet dresses, but oops. I’ll work on that. And accessories in general.

In coloring the two representative dresses, I changed the original color of Ifu’s gown from a soft baby blue to this bolder green. Ifu already has a light blue dress (from the Oscars plate).

This yellow-green was a fun color to mix and I wanted something that was just more season-appropriate. Let’s face it: nothing screams “Spring” louder than bright bright green!

Xia’s dress has a lot of sequins and things on it. Even though I tried to paint it glittery, the scan didn’t pick that up. It looks all right, but when you color your own version feel free to tart it up! It should be spangly!

Ah well, it’s all good practice.

The third dress on the plate was originally bright yellow, but again, I already painted Xia’s Oscars dress yellow, so I skipped it. You can decide for yourself what color you want it to be for yourself.

For all the Marchessa gowns I picked ones with relatively straight or fishtail skirts. There were a number of bigger poufier gowns, but I figured they would only fit two to a plate (and only if I put one upside-down) so I originally skipped them.

I’m getting smarter about how to plate stuff, however. So, like I mentioned above, I’ll probably go back and pick up a couple more plates worth of Marchessa fashions.

Marchessa is definitely one of those designers were you could make dozens of dresses and not run out of exciting reference material. When I get better at doing the glittery stuff, you will certainly see more. Glitz is something I need to work on. Especially in Black and white.

Next up: Ralph Lauren and some totally not-Spring fashions for the men!

[click this link or the black & white plate to download a printable .pdf]