Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: Treasure Island, One of my Favorite Novels As some of you may recall, in January, Boots, Julie and Myself started a collaborative paper doll project, all drawing clothing for a shared base doll. Missy joined us shortly there after and we have continued to create, each month, an outfit for our shared paper doll lady.
For month four, our theme was Favorite Novels. For me, I knew immediately that Treasure Island was the novel I was going to work with. I fell in love with Treasure Island when I was a child. It has everything- a coming of age story, pirates, buried treasure and lots of adventure and betrayal.
The lack of ladies in Treasure Island never bothered me, but since our paper doll is a lady, I created some fantastic pirate attire for her to wear. And there were plenty of lady pirates in the real world, though I doubt many of them wore things like this.
Back when this whole year long collaboration project was proposed, I thought there was basically no chance it would survive four whole months. Call me a cynic, I suppose, but here we are in March of 2017 and there’s another batch of paper doll outfits on the horizon for my wonderful fellow paper doll creators- Boots, Julie and Missy.
Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations:1920s Children’s Clothing- One of my True Loves
Today’s Poppet 1920s Children’s Wardrobe Collection contribution is a spring time dress. I sort of thought of it as an Easter dress when I designed it, but Easter was a few weeks ago. I chose a pale color scheme with soft blue and pink for the dress. With the dress is a matching cloche, because lord knows the 1920s loved a good looking cloche.
I know I’ve spoken before about how much I adore 1920s children’s clothing. There’s just something about clothing of that era that I adore. I have equal love for children’s clothing of the 1930s, but I haven’t had as many opportunities to draw that.
The realization that fashion history books are a justifiable business expense has made it a lot harder to talk myself out of buying them.
I do realize that recently most of what I have posted for the Poppet’s paper dolls to print have been either from the Fairy Tale project or the 1920s project. Never fear, there are also normal clothing on the horizon. I mean, even paper dolls need jeans.
So, what do you think of today’s 1920s paper doll dress? Love it? Hate it? Wish it was purple? Let me know in a comment.
Meanwhile, if you want to support the blog, then think about becoming a Patron or liking it on facebook and tune in tomorrow for a paper doll outfit inspired by one of my favorite novels.
Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: Suits! All the Suits!
While my second doll ever in the Sprites printable paper doll collection was Yumiko, I haven’t done an Asian guy yet for the Sprites and I wanted to do that today. I am pleased to introduce to everyone Shirou. Shirou is a Japanese name which means Fourth Son. It’s traditionally given to the, wait for it, fourth son. I though it was super fitting, because Shirou is my fourth male Sprites paper doll. The others are (in order of “birth”) Zachary, Xavier and Víctor.
I also ended up making his suit grey which is the same color as yesterday’s suit for Teresa. Anyone want to guess my favorite suit color? (Hint: It is not Navy. 🙂 )
Back when PTP began, I was petrified of trying to draw Asian features. Mostly, it was the epicanthic fold that worried me. I was also self conscious that, as a non-Asian, I didn’t want to draw a caricature. While it has taken me a long time, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with the whole epicanthic fold thing and come to realize there is huge variation in this feature.
See, more then you wanted to know about the epicanthic fold.
So, what do you think of today’s Sprite paper doll? Let me know in a comment. I love hearing from you all.
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Oh, and tomorrow, there will be another installment of the Poppets 1920s series and on Friday, come around for the next piece in the 2017 Collab paper doll project.
It seemed past time to me that I should share a new Sprites face. Today I am pleased to introduce Teresa, the newest member of the Sprites printable paper doll family. In my head, she’s a Latina paper doll, but her skin-tone and coloring could be from a variety of places.
The name “Teresa” is Spanish and is one of those names where the meaning is a little unclear. It has been the name of several Catholic saints though and I’ve always had a fondness for it.
I’ve been wanting to create a printable paper doll set with suits, so today Teresa has a beautiful grey suit. I chose grey for the suit, because I love grey suits. I think it would be beautiful in a color as well. Maybe a strong purple or soft blue would look really nice.
Her shoes either match her purse or are meant to be nice basics. They do have pretty high heels… but then I love a good pair of high heels.
Yesterday, I posted this blog income report for the first quarter of 2017. I get erratic questions from folks who want to start a blog, so it might be interesting if you haven’t looked at it and care. If you don’t care, then feel free to ignore it. 🙂
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Oh, and tomorrow, there will be a new guy paper doll to be added to the Sprites paper doll family. I’m super excited to introduce him and his dashing suit.
I am interrupting the regular paper doll content to share some numbers in the first ever Paper Thin Personas Blog Income Report. Paper dolls will resume tomorrow.
I went back and forth and back and forth about today’s post. I was raised in a family where you do not talk about money, so talking about money and business openly is pretty counter intuitive for me. However, when I first started blogging I saw some really distorted income reports and I wanted to share one that wasn’t from someone who was trying to quit their day job. (Seriously, I adore my day job, why would I want to quit it?)
Let’s start with expenses.
Expenses for Paper Thin Personas
The PTP’s expenses I keep in three categories- fees, advertising and blog expenses.
Fees are the costs Etsy and Patreon both charge for processing payment. Fees cost me about 72 dollars this month.
I chose to try out Pinterest advertising for the first time this quarter. It was most a bust with a click-through rate (how many people who saw it and then clicked) of less then 1%. I also promote the Etsy Store and that costs a little too.
Total expenses for advertising were 43 dollars.
Blog expenses include the server hosting costs, paying for social media management tools, security and backups. My hosting is super cheap and very bare bones, but I really should switch companies and/or upgrade. Once I do that, my hosting costs will jump from about 12.00 per month up to the 30 to 40 dollar range.
I also pay about 21 dollars a month for a security company to monitor the blog (it was hacked last year), provide a firewall, cacheing and daily backups. All things I really need.
Blog expenses cost me about 144 dollars this last quarter and this will increase if I change hosts.
You will note I don’t have supplies in this pie-chart. I am horrible at tracking my supplies, but my resolution for next quarter is to get better at it.
Income For Paper Thin Personas
My income was a little odd this quarter. I got my last payout from a licensing deal with HP Printers, which was for 497 dollars. I also got a deposit for a commission which I’ll be finishing up this April. That was 100 dollars.
The Etsy store debuted and actually did better than I expected. I made 12 sales and a total of about 88 dollars.
The most important income piece is Patreon. Patrons donated 290.00 dollars this quarter. They paid for the blog to stay on the internet and there was a little left over to do some ads. In short, I am very grateful to all of them. You guys rock!
To sum up all the numbers, it cost me 258 to run the site. I made about 948. The net income is 690.
However, this includes 497 dollars from HP which will not happen again, plus commission funds, if you take out the one-time payments, the net income becomes 93 dollars.
The most popular dolls have been the redhead with the orange base and the blond with the orange base. None of the black and white dolls have sold more than one copy. I think it is interesting that the clothing sells in black and white, but the dolls don’t seem to move much.
As you can see from the chart above, clothing sales far out pace doll sales.
Paper Thin Personas Site Stats
I am averaged 36,000 views per month, 5368 users per month and 9,000 sessions per month. These numbers aren’t bad, per say, but they haven’t changed a great deal in the last few years. Last year, for example, I averaged 5,018 users per month and in 2015, I averaged 4750 users per month.
Not bad numbers, per say, just not great numbers. If I want to grow PTP, I need to get more eyes on the blog.
I have 3462 Pinterest followers which is steadily growing and remains my highest social media referral site. The Facebook page had 46 likes at the start of April. The twitter feed is… well, it remains pretty unpopular, but I am trying to not totally give up on it.
Where to Go from Here?
I’ll admit the math has made me do some thinking. I swore long ago that I wouldn’t put advertising on the site and I still don’t want to do that. I stand by my belief that keeping the site ad free is important, but it massively reduces sources of income.
Affiliate programs are another option for income streams, but I need to discuss that with a lawyer. The blog is in a strange position as far as the Child’s Online Privacy Protection Act is concerned. I need to make sure I am not running afoul of that law.
It is my belief that the only way to really increase my income is to get more eyes on the blog and that means gritting my teeth and paying something for advertising, even though I hate doing it. I just need to decide what the best form that would take.
Pinterest remains my top referrer with Facebook coming in close behind. The possibility of a Facebook ad has occurred to me, but I’m not sure if I want to spend the money. I have heard mixed things about Facebook ads.
So, I think that’s everything. Regular paper dolls with resume tomorrow. 🙂
Thoughts? Questions? Let me know in a comment. This is my first ever year to track all this stuff. I don’t know if I’ll do a report like this every quarter, but it was a really healthy exercise I think.
Let me be frank, I don’t really love the fashions of the 1970s, but they are starting to grow on me a little. There’s something about the bold colors and the big collars that I kinda have a fondness for.
So, I might never been a die hard “1970s YAY” kinda girl, I am at least learning to enjoy some of the looks of the era.
Last year I drew my first 1970s stuff and this year I wanted to continue dabbling in the era. While I think the Ms. Mannequin dolls look kinda odd as Vikings (their pose just doesn’t work), they make much better swinging cats of the 1970s.
Both of these dresses are based on pattern cover designs. I love using vintage pattern covers to design paper doll dresses. They are usually pretty easy to draw from too, which I am grateful for.
The dress on the left is from Simplicity 6605 and McCall’s 3936 and McCall’s 3936 which was apparently a “carefree pattern” which I think meant it was supposed to be easy to make. The dress on the right is from Simplicity 6605 which was a “how to sew” pattern. It would teach you, apparently, how to make set in gathered sleeves.
These days, I use online videos when I don’t know how to sew something, but I suppose that wasn’t exactly an option in 1974.
Also, I don’t sew people clothing. I am strictly a doll clothing sewing kinda girl.
Well, what do you all think of today’s 1970s dresses? Is this a decade of fashion you really love? Do the Ms. Mannequin dolls need maybe a jumpsuit or something to do with their dresses?
Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: This Fashion Plate from 1880 and Things the Scare Me
Yesterday I posted fantasy garments based on some traditional Asian attire. Today I am hopping back to Europe to post a riff on 15th and 16th century dress.
Today’s Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper doll dress crosses Italian clothing in the late 1400s with English costume in the mid-1500s. There’s a definite Spanish Farthingale thing going on in that skirt shape. Spanish Farthngales were hoop skirts of their era and gave dresses a distinct cone shape. It was all the rage in England towards the end of the 1500s. Here’s an example of what I talking about.
The sleeves of today’s paper doll gown are pretty Italian. The style in Italy at the very end of the 1400s and the beginning of the 1500s. It was considered fashionable to have the shift sticking out through the spaces the sleeves- my paper dolls are nothing if not fashionable. Here is an example of the sleeves I mean and here is another one.
When it came time to color today’s paper doll, I fell back on the colors I tend to like when it comes to Tudor feeling things. I settled on copper and black for the color scheme. While I experimented with brighter options, I loved the sophistication these colors created.
As with many of my fantasy paper dolls, I added shoes and stockings to round out the outfit. After all, I do love to draw shoes. These shoes are neither English nor Italian, but more a pair of modern ones. So, that continues the cross-cultural experience here.
So, what do people think of my English-Italian Renaissance love child of a paper doll dress? Leave me a comment and let me know.
Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations:Kimono, Qiapo and Stuff
It has been a while since I dabbled in Asian dress inspired fantasy attire for the paper dolls. Sometimes, I feel a little strange borrowing from Asian traditional attire, because I don’t feel like I have the right. I pointed this out of a friend and they asked if I didn’t have the right to borrow from Japan, why did I have the right to borrow from Europe?
I really didn’t have a good answer to that one. I am certainly not now, nor have ever been, European. I was born in Alaska, after all.
Cultural appropriation is one of those areas that I never quite know how I feel. Still, being aware is important and trying to be culturally aware matters. Respecting other cultures and trying to depict them respectfully is important.
So, today’s fantasy foray crosses qiapo and kimonos in a way that doesn’t make much logical sense, but does look neat. And looking neat is an important critera for my fantasy paper doll creations. (Hence why I once drew this and got to call it armor.)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the colors in today’s pair of Sprite paper doll pieces came from this kimono. I love kimonos and their color combinations are often surprising to me. Probably, because I lack the cultural context to understand the color choices, but I always seem to enjoy the surprise.
According to this chart I saw on the internet, and we all know how trustworthy that is, orange and purple are common colors for May kimonos. In the world of kimonos, colors signify season, status, gender, age, and all sorts of other things. It is actually a fascinating area of study, if you know, you happen to be into dress.
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My first four gowns (three of which are done) are all based on the elements- fire, water, air and earth. I have fire, water and air all finished. Earth is… well, giving me some trouble.
I have faith I will finish it eventually.
Each gown has two accessories- a staff to channel magical power and a pair of boots.
Today’s fire gown was inspired by ancient Greek dress. I start most of my paper doll creations with a thumbnail doodle and I did the same here. Then I expanded the doodle into a full on paper doll dress.
I share my doodles mostly on Patreon, but once in a while one appears on Facebook, usually after I’ve shared with it my Patron’s first.
Think about becoming a patron or following the facebook page if you want to show the blog some love. And who doesn’t want to do that?
Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: Evening Gowns and Boots’ Paper Doll Series Catwalk Couture I think one of the great benefits of the internet is that it has created a world where people are willing to share their work. I try to visit all the active paper doll blogs I am aware of and comment on them as much as I can.
Boots has been working on a Catwalk Couture paper doll fashion series where she has been drawing the designs of some of the great contemporary designers. I was inspired by her work to create an evening gown that could have come off the runway.
I was heavily influenced by the designs of Marchesa one of my favorite evening gown designers.
Hazel’s hair is based on this beautiful natural hair up-dos like this one and this one. I’m worried it looks less like a natural up-do and more like a turban, but maybe I’m just being hyper critical.
Since I am not black, I always feel a little self-conscious when I draw things like natural hair styles.
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