Guinevere Paper Doll - Velvet Burgundy (Season 5)

Queen  Guinevere - from the BBC production of Merlin  

One of the advantages of bloggiing is that you can break all your own rules and be spontaneous if the feeling takes you. When I first decided to make a Morgana paper doll I decided to give her 6 dresses and leave it at that.  Then I thought I would follow on with Gwen and make about the same number, ending with her coronation gown.  I was also supposed to make Gwen's dresses in order but even though I still have 3 earlier ones planned, I couldn't resist jumping ahead and making this one!

Angel Coulby as Guinevere

I partly based my new Queen Guinevere doll on this photograph of Angel Coulby.  I think she looks lovely.  The gown is sophisticated but she still looks innocent and very pretty.

Usually Guinevere is my least favourite character in the Arthurian Cycle.  She tends to come across as vain and shallow and completely unworthy of Arthur.  Angel Coulby is different - she makes the character far more sympathetic and likeable and I've thoroughly enjoyed the series as a result..

The photograph is (I think) a little bit different to the others I based the earlier doll on and I'm not too sure about the result I've finished up with here.  Portraiture is not one of my strong points - luckily for me neither Angel Coulby or anyone associated with the show are likely to see my efforts!











The doll is not the best I've made either.  I'm afraid I rushed through her a little bit to get to the dress . . . .

Guinevere - Queen of Camelot

And what a dress!  I don't think I've ever seen a colour that is so gorgeous or a dress so flattering.  Its just as well that I am not a teenager anymore.  I would be designing a new wedding for myself based around this dress (I wrote about my tendency to do this in my Sulamith Wulfing post.)  As an aside - red would not have been a strange colour for a wedding.  I think I've mentioned before that the Victorians introduced the concept of the white wedding (for purity).  Prior to that brides never wore the colour and centuries before the traditional shade was red with its connotations of fertility.  (For that reason I decided to dress my character Saraid in red for her marriage to Rowallan in the book I'm trying to write.  (So much to do, so little time!))

With all the other dresses I've made my scanner has reproduced them fairly accurately with regard to colour.  This one unfortunately did not come out as well.  The colours of the original are far more vibrant than anything I can reproduce - it must be the rich dark shades.  As a result I've included two scans - the first is the result after I have 'auto corrected' the image in Microsoft Picture Manager.  The second is the original scan. 

Guinevere - Velvet Burgundy

Guinevere - Velvet Burgundy

Queen Guinevere - Sketch 

Queen Guinevere - Initial Sketch

Guinevere - Velvet Burgundy Sketch

Guinevere - alternate version of completed gown

I've been completely neglecting Morgana while making these dolls of Gwen.  I've decided the next dress I make will be one for Morgana and I want to try my hand at 'evil enchantress Morgana' - I just can't make up my mind whether to attempt the lace concoction with the green underskirt or the cape styled outfit with the gorgeous chunky belt!

Queen Guinevere's blue dress can be found here

The original Guinevere paper doll can be found here

Guinevere Early Days can be found here

Guinevere Pretty in Pastels can be found here

Guinevere Almost a Queen can be found here

The original Morgana paper doll can be found here

 Copyright Sharon Souter - not to be used for commercial purposes