Summer Garden: A Paper Doll and Her Clothing

logo-floral-marisole-color I love color. I have teal dining room chairs, after all and a red cabinet in my dining room that holds my larger serving dishes. My favorite sweater is lime green and very fuzzy. I call it the Mountain Dew sweater. The point I am trying to make is that if I have the choice between neutrals and a color- you can pretty much count on me picking out a color. And this helps explain why I decided to go so bright and rich with Marisole’s paper doll clothing.

Someone, I think it was Boots, remarked that she was picturing a lot of yellow and green. Well, she wasn’t wrong… Yellow and Green are definitely here. I wanted color in this paper doll set- the sort of vibrant colors I love in flowers when they are in full bloom. Of course, right now it’s cold and damp here in Alabama, but eventually it won’t be and then the bright colors of spring and summer with come.

And I can complain about the heat on this blog, thereby continuing my theme of never being happy about the weather. (Though I suppose this isn’t true, I do enjoy Spring in Alabama.)

summer-garden-paper-doll-color

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}

One of my grand frustrations with Marisole’s pose is that you can’t actually layer a long sleeved top under a skirt and expect the skirt to stay on the doll, because of her right arm which is against her stomach. This is one of the annoyances that occurs to me when I am designing mix and match paper doll clothing for her and I want to do things that just won’t work.

I’d scrap the series and redraw, but it is uber hard to give up something that I’ve been doing for six years. There are about 240 Marisole Monday & Friend’s posts on the blog. It is my most popular series and so I feel a little bound to it. It’s also a tiny bit weird to be working on something I drew over six years ago. I remember drawing the first Marisole doll. I was in grad school sitting in the library killing time between class and when I had to go to work.

And now I live in a totally different state and she’s still around. Kinda crazy, honestly.

(Don’t fear, I don’t plan on getting rid of Marisole Monday & Friend‘s anytime soon. Just thoughts about the paper doll series.)

As always, I love hearing comments from readers and, if you want to support the blog, here’s theĀ Patreon page for it.

And Happy New Year to those celebrating the Year of the Monkey!

8 thoughts on “Summer Garden: A Paper Doll and Her Clothing”

  1. I fix the problem of layering by printing on card stock and cutting out the outfits without tabs. Then I lay the doll on a flat surface and play with her like a magnetic paperdoll. It makes mixing and matching very quick and saves time cutting out. The downside is you can’t move the paperdoll around after dressing her but I mostly just enjoy dressing the dolls and trying lots of outfit combinations.

  2. hahaha ~ like Elizabeth said…and that’s reason 187 why i don’t make tabs.

    i love love love the rich yellows and greens! and all your patterns on this one are fabulous.

  3. Yeah, I know a lot of people don’t like tabs, but I just really do. I mean… maybe I have a problem. I think that if you are going to have a paper doll than her clothing should stay on when she’s standing up.

    Plus I think it is a lot easier to cut off tabs than add tabs.

    • it’s definitely not a problem! just a different way of playing. i’ve always played with my paper dolls flat (they’re just easier to work with that way because you don’t have to worry about knocking then down or their clothes falling off.

      i also have a horror of folded paper, so bent tabs make my skin crawl ~ hahaha.

  4. I use an Excto knife and cut a waist slit between the body and the arm. Of course that is the tab that HAS to be inserted first. (smile) I don’t think it would cause consternation to simply re-draw the position of that one arm, however. You could call it Marisole Evolves. Of course, redrawing to a back view would be Marisole Revolves. (giggle)

    • “Marisole Revolves” did make me giggle, too. So thank you for that. šŸ™‚

      I use an razor to cut between the arm and the stomach too, but maybe just redrawing the offending arm (Bad! Bad! Arm!) would be the simplest solution. I was thinking about it because recently I was working on some dresses and the layering problem became very apparent to me.

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