I make a lot of tea. I don’t always finish my tea, but there is something about heating up water in a kettle, filling my cup with water, adding a little honey and then slowly stirring it. So, I settled down last night with my cup of hot tea next to my usual spot on the couch and I tried to think about what to write tonight about this set of paper doll outfits.
And I got nothing.
Seriously. Crickets.
I designed these a while ago, but I can’t recall when. I colored them with a sea-side ocean inspired color scheme, because well… it is full of colors I like. Teals and blues and celadon greens.
And that’s really all I got.
I realized, as I sit here trying to think of what to write, that maybe that is okay. Maybe it is okay that these paper doll outfits are just outfits.
Not everything has to have an epic story. These are just some nice paper doll clothes. They expand the collection for the Ms. Mannequins. That’s all.
I hope everyone enjoys them. Prints them. Plays with them or not… up to you all.
And now I’m going to finish my tea and go to bed. And if you’re thinking, but why is this going up on Thursday? It is because I will be traveling on Friday and will be without access to any sort of computer until late late in the evening, so I decided to post a day early. Breaking my own rules already!
I am super excited to be making this announcement. Julie, of Paper Doll School, and I are hosting a paper doll round robin. We have our model drawn thanks to Julie, but she desperately needs gowns to wear to the Halloween Masquerade Ball!
Step 2: Print the file at Full Size or Open the file with your favorite graphics editor.
Step 3: Draw a fantastic masquerade gown. It can be in color or black and white. No judgement here. Just create something that inspires you.
Step 4. Save or scan your gown at 300 dpi as a JPG or PNG. (This part is important to I can make sure all the gowns are high quality for the finished set.)
Step 4: Email your gown to me at paperthinpersonas@gmail.com or Julie at jamatthews@ymail.com before Midnight (Eastern Time) on the 24th of October. Be sure to include how you’d like to be credited and if you want to say something about your design, than tell us that too!
Step 5: Wait until the 31st of October when Julie and I will post the finished gowns and the doll, all ready to attend the Masquerade Ball!
See? That isn’t so hard.
We hope lots of people will come play with us and join in the fun, so please consider creating a gown for our Lady of the ball. 🙂
If you have any questions, please just ask in a comment. This is going to be so much fun.
Back when I first named this paper doll Maeghan. The “real Maeghan” demanded that she have “absurd fantasy dresses.” Well, I don’t know how absurd these are, but I do think they are fairly over the top. Most of my dresses are realistic in so much as they could exist, not in so much as they do or should exist.
I did have fun drawing them. I admit my normal taste is a more towards these sorts of fantasy gowns over the huge skirted things that I drew today. Still it was fun to go wide skirted for once and I might have been influenced by watching Cinderella recently. (Though the Evil Step Mother has far better costumes than anyone else in that film.)
I wanted the full skirts to feel light and almost tulle like. I was thinking about late 1940’s and early 1950s ballgowns like this one and this one as I drew these. Her hair is inspired by the 1940s as well, blame the Evil Step Mother.
I gave her a sword, because I wanted her to be able to defend herself. Plus, she has plenty of room to conceal it among those amazing skirts.
Has anyone else seen the new Cinderella movie? What did you think of the costumes? I really enjoyed them, myself.
Once in a while, I host little drawings for custom paper dolls. I do them rarely, because frankly they are time consuming.
Anyway, last June I held one. People submitted custom paper doll suggestions. You can see all of them on the original contest post. The winner of the drawing was Lina, but I added all the ideas to my paper doll ideas list. Today’s paper doll comes from an idea submitted back then. (See, I do sometimes draw things people request.)
Erin Winslow proposed a steampunk set based on Amelia Bloomer’s women’s dress reform movement costume. My first thought was, “No Way!”
Because, honestly, I really didn’t like the Bloomer Dress. I’ve always thought it was both unflattering and kinda ugly. Why would I want to draw something I thought was ugly?
And then… rather unexpectedly, I found myself thinking… I should draw it because I find it ugly. I should tackle a style I dislike for a paper doll set. I should stretch. Plus I recently read a this book on Victorian dress reform movements.
First, I had to gather sources and ideas. You can see a collage of these below.
I remembered somewhere I had seen a photo of a female doctor wearing a Bloomer costume. That was where I started thinking about doctors cases and I found that Pat Stall, one of my favorite paper doll artists ever, had done an Amelia Bloomer paper doll set. I found some wonderful modern pieces and then a few great cartoons from various Victorian periodicals. I felt like I was on my way towards a set I might actually like.
I decided to cast Hazel as my bloomer wearing steampunk Doctor. I gave her glasses and some doctor bag inspired accessories. She has three dresses to go over the two pairs of bloomers. Her vest, shirt and skirt can be worn over any of the bloomers as well. I did not make my bloomers quite as full as those worn by Amelia Bloomer. Despite creating this paper doll set, I still find the look to be astonishingly unflattering. Never the less, here is my foray into the world of steampunk bloomer costumes.
Plus, I got to draw Victorian glasses and that was fun. 🙂
As most of my readers have figured out by now, I’m currently conducting a survey about developing products to open a Paper Thin Personas store in the next year and some other stuff. It’ll only take about 15 minutes and I’ll send you a thank you paper doll if you leave me your email at the end. (The emails are deleted out of the survey results immediately to keep things as anonymous as possible. So, no worries about that.)
Thanks again to everyone whose already done the survey! I’m closing it on Saturday, so I can begin to analyze the results. I’ll share some of my discoveries sometime in the next few weeks.
So, remember how on Friday I said there were going to be changes… Well, this is one of them.
The time has come to say a sad farewell to the Showcase.
I have been horrible about updating it and when I went through my email to clean it up a few months ago, I found dozens of things that people had sent me and I had done nothing with. I felt rather guilty and then decdeed it was time for the Showcase to go.
There is now a Pinterest board called “PTP Paper Doll Sightings.” I’ve seen a few pattern designers use this method for showing off the work of people who had made their patterns and I thought it was a great idea.
It is so much easier for me to just download the image from my email and post it up onto Pinterest. No fuss, no muss and I get to share things that people don’t send me, but I find around the internet where my art has been featured in various ways. Plus I can link to others sites very easily which lets them get some credit too. So, go check it out and let me know if there is anything I should add to it.
I will probably still do posts of readers creations once in a while on the blog, but I’ll update the Pinterest board much more regularly. I have been testing it for the last few weeks and it has performed admirably. So, feel free to go follow it and see how people have colored and used my art. 🙂
One of my good friends has nicknamed this paper doll, “Beardy Swordsman!”. I have decided to go with the poll name winner and call him Mikhail. Personally, I was rooting for Mikhail to win and that was my vote. I feel a little guilty because Mikhail won by just one vote and that might have been me. Still, I’m allowed to vote in my own polls, right? I didn’t vote more than once…
I decided to make a knight paper doll as the first of the Mikhail paper dolls, not out of any particularly grand plan, but because I think a lot about the sort of stories you might want to play out with the paper dolls. Back when I was a kid and I played with paper dolls, the narrative provided by the paper doll book rarely worked out as written. With a wedding set, I might decide I actually liked the Maid of Honor paper doll better than the Bride paper doll and she was going to run off with the Groom and the Best Man was actually the older brother of the….
Well, you get the idea.
So, when I create paper dolls I think about the types of stories you might want to tell. Since every doll of a series can share outfits with every other doll of the same series, Mikhail and Marcus can exchange clothes. Now along with being airship mechanics or casual dates, they can also be knights who rescue princesses or knights who get lost in swamps and need to be rescued themselves.
Several years ago, I met a young lady who was four (I think) and who very much wanted to be a knight. I thought to myself, “Good for you.” I drew a knight paper doll for her, but every time I draw a knight, I think of that young lady.
I have done a lot of dark haired guys, so I decided to make Mikhail a blond. Frankly, coloring armor is fairly dull. It is made of steel. It is going to be silver. There’s just not a lot of variability in that. I went with a lot of gold accents on the armor, because I have decided that Mikhail is a noble night and can afford to spend a fair bit of cash on his armor. Plus it broke up the grey.
In a totally unrelated note, as many of you know, I am currently conducting a survey. (At this point, my daily readers are like… Can she shut up about the Survey already?) I would ask that if you haven’t filled it out, please do so. It’s about developing products to open a Paper Thin Personas store in the next year. It should only take about 15 minutes and would be uber-helpful and I’ll send you a thank you paper doll if you leave me your email at the end. (The emails are deleted out of the survey results immediately to keep things as anonymous as humanly possible. So, don’t worry about that.)
Thanks again to everyone whose already done the survey! I’ve learned a lot from everyone’s comments and responses. Maybe at the end, I’ll do a post about some of the stuff I learned? I don’t know… does that violate the principle of an anonymous survey? Thoughts from my readers?
Today’s paper doll is named Shayna. Shayna is a Yiddish name that means “beautiful”. I also liked it, because it was close to Shauna which was the name of my best friend in college and, also, one of my roommates for several years. Shauna, it should be noted, looked nothing like my paper doll Shayna. I don’t really draw paper dolls of my friends, even though I do sometimes name them after them.
Shayna is yet another paper doll with micro-braids. I would apologize for this, but the truth is that I really like how micro-braids look and they are fun to draw. Shayna is the same skin tone as Kira another one of the Ms. Mannequin paper dolls, so they can share shoes.
I’m sure Kira is grateful, because she doesn’t have any flats and might want some. The bases of the paper doll are the same color, so if there is ever confusion about who can share with each other, I hope this clears it up.
As always with paper doll skin-tones, I really do like this warm soft brown color. I think it is rich and natural looking. Plus, it is a shade which still prints beautifully on my home printer. I love my darkest shade of brown, but it doesn’t have much contrast with the black line-work. You can check out my skin-tone pallet if you want to see the commonest eleven skin-tone colors are. I’m not totally pleased with some of those colors, but I also haven’t had a chance to refine the pallet.
I haven’t really got a lot else to say about Shayna. I think she’s cute. She’s getting to me closer to my 10 Ms. Mannequin paper doll posts in 2015 goal. That always makes me happy.
As we move towards 2016, there are going to be lots of changes to the blog.
First of all, the blog is moving to a fixed schedule with posts on Monday, Friday and an erratic posts on Wednesday. This is actually the schedule I have had it on for the last few weeks. There will always be a paper doll on Monday and Friday. Wednesdays will be everything from historical costume book reviews to interviews to sketchbook content. All sorts of things I’d like to do with that day of the week. And, once in a while, probably an extra paper doll or two.
In the meantime, if you have fifteen minutes and don’t mind spending it answering a thrilling survey… I am currently conducting a survey of my readers. If you have already taken the time to answer, THANK YOU! If you haven’t please consider it.
If you have any questions, concerns or thoughts you’d like to share with me- Survey or otherwise- please feel free to drop me an email (paperthinpersonas@gmail.com) or post a comment. I might not respond to every comment, but I try to answer all the ones that ask questions.
I’m usually not organized enough to get successive photos of the same page of the same sketchbook, but I planned carefully and am pleased to show off today the three major stages of paper doll gown creation.
Stage 1: The Light Pencil Sketch
The first step is to lightly sketch out the major lines of the paper doll gown, shoes and hair. This is one of two dresses that I have planned for a princess set. At this stage of the process the only two things I had decided were that I wanted a full-skirted silhouette, the paper doll was for Marisole Monday & Friends, her shoes were going to have stockings, and that I was going to make her black with an afro-puff styled hair. I hadn’t really thought much about other details yet.
At this stage, when nothing is really finalized, I always feel excitement and dread. More than one paper doll set has never gotten past the rough pencil stage.
Stage 2: The Detailed Pencil Sketch
The next step in the process is doing what I call “detailed” linework. This stage can take several revisions- that’s why I draw fairly lightly. I cleaned up some of the silhouette, added lines to indicate folds and then started thinking about pattern.
Lately, I have been really into traditional African fabrics dyed with a wax process. So, I decided to create several pattern elements inspired by those textiles that I could use to construct a pattern on the wide expanse of the skirt. I chose a lattice pattern for the jacket and then created four other motifs. I might not use all of them, but I like to have options. You can see my growing collection of African print fabrics on my African Prints & Fashion Pinterest board.
I changed the design of the tiara, because I wanted it to match the motifs I had designed for the pattern that will eventually go on the skirt. That meant altering the tiara accordingly. I really like the new design.
Additionally, I settled on adding garters to the tops of the stockings and decided on a psuedo-Victorian look for the shoes. Try as a might, I can’t help but associate these full skirts with the gowns of the 1860s. This is also the stage of the process when I add accessories like the hair pick and tea set. Everything on this page will be inked when I start inking.
Stage 3: Inking
After I have settled on a detailed pencil sketch, I begin inking. I always start with the major outlines and then work my way in. The last things to get inked are the fold lines on the skirts or ruffles and stitching on boots. Because ink can smear, I always take pauses while inking to let things dry a little before continuing my work. There are inevitably mistakes or I suddenly decide I want to add something I hadn’t planned, but mostly it is a slow and steady process. Inking is very meditative for me- I really enjoy settling down on my couch and getting to ink for an hour or so in the evening while watching television.
Opps… I just noticed I forgot to ink the folds in the ruffle at the top of the bodice. My bad. I’ll do that after I erase all the pencil lines.
Certain elements- like the strings on the instrument remain uninked, because I will add them with Photoshop. I am not very good at drawing perfectly straight lines.
Before I scan this drawing, I will erase all the pencil lines and check for and make any minor corrections I need to make. I’ve already noticed a mistake.
While putting all these together in a post only took about thirty minutes, the truth is that each of these photo represents weeks between stages. It takes a long time to get from Stage 1 to Stage 3 and there are still steps to go before the paper doll goes live.
So, two other little things. One, there is currently a poll on what to name my “bearded friend of Marcus” paper doll, go vote if you haven’t. Maxwell is currently in the lead. Secondly, I am currently doing a survey of my readers on Product Development for Paper Thin Personas. Sounds thrilling, I know… But it has been already very enlightening. So, if you should have about fifteen minutes and you haven’t done it already, I would urge you to please fill it out and, as a reward, you will get sent a Thank You paper doll, if you give me your email address.
Meet the first Friend of Marcus! He doesn’t have a name yet- there’s a poll to vote for one below. Once he has a name, I’ll start calling him by it. For now, I think of him as Marcus’ bearded friend.
I’ve been wanting to do a knight with armor male paper doll since I added male paper dolls to the Marisole Monday & Friends collection. I waited a while though, because armor is actually rather hard to draw. I do think knight paper dolls make great paper dolls for boys and I am trying to be diverse in my paper doll creations.
I was complaining about how boring men’s hairstyles were and then I remembered- facial hair. Mustaches, beards, goatees, soul patches- There are many fun options for paper doll facial hair. So, this guy got himself a beard.
After doing some experimenting, I think the helmet works best for the printable paper doll if it is placed underneath the armor, rather than on top of it. He’s got a broad sword and an axe.
So I have narrowed my options down to four different names. Help me decide which one I should choose by voting below. The poll is open until Sunday.
[poll id=”11″]
One last thing I wanted to mention- I’ve decided to do a survey of my readers about potentially opening a shop to sell my paper dolls and setting up a Patreon account for Paper Thin Personas. The survey should only take about 10 or 15 minutes of your time. If you complete the survey and include an email at the end, I will send you a “THANK YOU” paper doll within the next week.
In truth, we know very little about what Viking women wore, so that makes drawing a Viking paper doll sorta exciting (and scary). Unlike the 10th century Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings did not have a manuscript culture. Their art was generally metal work or stone carving and highly stylized. Making things more rather than less complicated, textiles rot extremely quickly in soil and those which remain in tact are often saved by their proximity to other materials such as metal, while metal breaks down it releases salts that protect the textile.
This means that what remains we have of Viking garments are fragmentary at best. While working on my Viking paper doll, I did my research, as always, and then made decisions based on my understanding of Viking garments. My understanding isn’t perfect. I am not an archaeologist, nor do I study Viking cultures extensively. My post Wednesday, Viking Women’s Dress in the 10th Century covers my sources and what I understand about Viking garments.
Though I came away from my research with the conclusion that there is more supposition than certainty in Viking dress research, I couldn’t be more pleased by how my printable paper doll came out. Her two apron-dresses or smokkrs over shirts were both designed based on the work of some excellent scholars. I chose a closed smokkr, because I agree with Ewing’s and Geijer’s views on the shape of the smokkr. I added an apron on one, based on the work of Bau and Ewing. To the other, I added pleats based on the reconstruction of a smokkr by Hilde Thunem. She has a key, a cup, a comb and a small knife. From the brooches on her left smokkr hang a pair of scissors, a small knife and a needle case.
Her shoes are based on finds at Viking York and her stockings and garters are based on the work of Ewing who argues that Viking men wore garters. I have no reason to believe if men were wearing them than women weren’t. Besides, Scandinavia is rather chilly to be wandering around bare legged.
When selecting colors, I tried to be aware of what colors were known to be used by Vikings. There were several references to brown twills in the articles I read (sources here) and the Kostup find is known to have been blue. Her brown smokkr, or apron-dress, has different colored straps, because linen loops were sometimes used on wool smokkrs. Linen, unlike wool, doesn’t take dye very well. I wanted to make a nod to that practice. Both the serks or shirts, I left undyed in lighter colors. One shirt is pleated, as is found in many Birka graves, and one is unpleated. The paper doll has a hair covering as referenced in Ewing’s book, Viking Clothing.
I made my Viking paper doll blond really only because when I think of Vikings, I think of blonds. Perhaps an unfair assumption, but there you go.
As with my Anglo-Saxon paper doll of the same century, I strongly recommend reading my little article and then reading my sources. I would also caution that most of the research on Vikings is not published in English. Until more of the articles are translated into English, I did the best I could with what sources were readily available.
I know people have been waiting on this printable paper doll, so I hope the wait was worth it. I certainly am nothing but pleased with how she came out.
As always, if you like the paper dolls and want to support the blog than check out my Patreon. 🙂
