It used to be that when I didn’t know what to name a printable paper doll set, I would fall back on using colors as name inspiration. This doesn’t work when the paper doll page doesn’t have any color.
In short, this is how I ended up entitling today’s set “Fabulous Fairy” which is a pretty dumb name.
Anyway, it might not be my most inspired paper doll naming moment, but I do really like the set. It’s also one of the sets that I consider being an “other friend” set to the Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper dolls. I wanted to give her a more angular face and so I altered the jaw to be narrow and sharp and her nose a bit, as well as her lips. I wanted her to seem more angular and more alien.
I drew this set at the same time as when I drew my Monica elven set. I’ve done another fairy set of Mia as a fairy. I don’t think these two fairies associate much. I think this fairy was much more elegant than the my Mia fairy. Just like with that paper doll, the wings can be pasted to the back of the doll using the white strip in the middle. As long as you just glue down the white strip, all the clothes tabs should still work.
At least, I hope they do, though I confess I have not tested them.
Happy Monday and enjoy the fairy paper doll. 🙂 She’ll be in color next week.
I really did not think I was going to get a Halloween paper doll done this year. I was certain I wouldn’t and then I was going through my logs and I noticed that I have done a Halloween paper doll every Halloween since 2010. Over the years, there have been a vampire, a costume set, another vampire, and a collab between me, Boots, Liana and Toria. So, that’s a lot of Halloween paper dolls.
This Halloween, we have a ghostly Greta of the Mini-Maidens. I do a lot of Mini-Maiden paper dolls for holidays. I think because they are black and white and I can get them done quickly.
I often forget about holidays until they are upon me.
I created this paper doll set thinking of ghosts and the idea of ghostly women. They exist in all sorts of cultures. White Lady ghosts are from Europe and usually have been betrayed by a lover. The Leanan sÃdhe is less a ghost and more a fairy, but according to Celtic lore they inspire their loves, but also induce madness and early death. In Japan, there are the Onry? vengeful ghosts of women wearing white marriage kimonos with long unkempt hair. They appear in a lot of Noh theater.
Anyway, I was channeling all that when I created this paper doll set. I made the set for Greta, because she hasn’t gotten a set in a while and I thought she needed some love.
Also, it was an excuse to draw some flowing gowns. I imagine the stuff on her feet is blood, but you can color it anyway you wish.
Maristela is a Spanish/Portuguese name coming from the title of the Virgin Mary, Stella Maris, meaning “star of the sea” in Latin. I thought it was such a pretty name that I had to use it, though I don’t know if there is anything “star” or “sea” like about today’s paper doll set.
I wanted to draw a “traditional” princess- sort of the Disney variety with two simple fantasy gowns. I wanted the paper doll to be pretty- pretty is not something I normally try to achieve, but that was what I wanted to get out of today’s paper doll set.
Maristela has two gowns and two pairs of shoes, giving her a total of four different outfit combinations. Her hair is long and wavy. I had fun drawing her harp, a rather unusual accessory for me to draw. I was going to draw a flute, but I was not successful.
I decided against drawing her a crown. I think my crowns usually come out poorly.
Intitally, I was going to go with pink as my color of choice for this monochrome color scheme. Really embrace the idea of “girly” paper doll sets. Instead, I decided to go with purple. It’s fairly girly, but it’s also not too girly.
In my mind, Maristela is latina, but there’s no reason she has to be.
Also, I’d like to say that I have been overwhelmed and very grateful to the wonderful responses to Marcus 2.0.
This project has been a long time in incubation. I drew my last Marcus 1.0 paper doll in July of 2013. He never looked right to me and he was out of proportion to the smaller more delicate Marisole, Mia, Margot, and Monica.
In the end, I took K’s and Julie’s advice and resized him in photoshop. He got skinnier and shorter. His head got smaller. I printed out the heavily altered version and sketched it up on lined paper as I do when I am testing a paper doll template. I altered it some more. I redrew the face about nine times.
And I’d given up on redoing Marcus 1.0 until I got some really nice comments from my readers asking when I was going to post another Marcus paper doll.
Well… no. He’s got pretty defined hips for a man and he does look a bit girly. Still, I’m more pleased with him than I ever imagined I could be with a male paper doll.
In celebration of his debut, I decided to post both the black and white and the color versions this Monday. I am very proud of how he came out.
I don’t have anything Halloween organized for Halloween this year. I am trying to get something done in time for Friday, but I wouldn’t hold my breath anyone. Instead, I offer a rare male paper doll to grace the collection of Marisole Monday & Friends.
I have big plans for Marcus. I’ve already drawn a fantasy set for him and I’m working on a steampunk airship mechanic set. I’m actually having more fun with my male paper doll than I ever thought I would.
Fall always seems to come slowly to Alabama. It’s finally here now and I am very happy with the crispness in the air when I pad out of the house in the morning to drive to work. I enjoy this crispness and it makes me want to bake pies or cookies.
Her Ladyship, on the other hand, is strictly spring based this morning with a Spring frock and a Breakfast Gown. Taking my cues from Victorian dress, the Breakfast Gown would be the least formal sort of dress. I’m not sure about the formality of the Spring Frock. I had fun with the wigs in this set and wigs are some of my favorite things to give a paper doll set. I think every set is more fun with wigs.
I’m still debating if I will post one of these paper doll pages on next Friday or something more Halloween festive. I haven’t got anything ready for Halloween and, unlike Liana who writes wonderful tales about her gowns, I rather don’t have much of a story inspiration. I’m very jealous of the creativity behind the stories behind her paper dolls.
Mine can mostly be boiled down too… “Pretty dress.”
Or in the case of today’s dresses, “Two dresses that I don’t like that much, but posted because they were done and part of the set and I liked the wigs to much to abandon them.”
Not really stirring stuff, but perhaps I get points for honesty.
The fascinating thing about paper dolls (or perhaps one fascinating thing) is how the medium of “paper” can effect the actual playability of a paper doll set. You can fold paper, so tabs are used to hold on pieces. Paper is easily cut to make slits for hats.
Magnetic paper dolls require a different thought process. Hats can not be tucked behind the doll, for example. There are no tabs and collars can not “wrap around” the back of the doll’s neck. Everything has to stack neatly on top of each other.
Sometimes people ask me if I would make the Flock a “paper” paper doll series, rather than a magnetic paper doll series. The answer is no. Flock was conceived to be made of magnet and their outfits just wouldn’t all work as paper set.
Today’s magnetic set features a dabble into Noir Punk by Pheobe, one of my other Flock magnetic paper dolls.
I had a very good childhood friend named Phoebe and it’s after her that I named this paper doll (though I have to confess the paper doll looks NOTHING like Phoebe.) I love the blue hair against the light brown skin tone and I really want her hats. Hats make everything better. I wish we still wore hats, except I look terrible in hats.
All the pieces on this wardrobe page and intended to be mixed and matched with all the pieces on Wren’s Noir Punk pages. I don’t think I did as good of a job on this set as I did on my Starling Punk Noir set. I have to give that some thought. In the meantime, enjoy the magnetic paper dolls. 🙂
Also, if you need instructions on how to make magnetic paper dolls, I explain too methods in my Magnetic Paper Dolls Tutorial.
Among other things I did last night, I took the time to tabulate the number of pages of paper doll content on the blog and update my sidebar. I’m up to 527 pages of printable paper dolls, including my magnetic paper dolls and my random stand alone paper dolls. Yay!
So far this year, I’ve posted 44 different Marisole Monday & Friends sets. For anyone interested, that’s 19 sets in color and 25 sets in black and white. Today’s set in color is totally a favorite. I love her braids, the color scheme and how her bow came out.
So, when I finished a bunch of Marisole Monday & Friends paper dolls, I was initially totally proud of myself. Now, it’s several weeks later and I truly couldn’t tell you what I had planned on saying about this paper doll set when it really comes down to it.
I suppose I could say something about how the colors are based on the sunset or about how important I think it is to have fantasy characters with brown skin, but really I don’t know that I haven’t already said all of that before.
I could also express my shock when I once asked a student what she was doing over the weekend and she told me going to the salon to get micro-braids put in.
And I said, “But that won’t take your whole Saturday.”
And she said, “Yeah it will. About six hours.”
And I was stunned into silence.
So, let us hope that the elves have magic or something to speed that process along. If I had magical powers, I would totally use them to make sure I never had a bad hair day and also do my dishes. If you had magical powers, what would you use them for?
I remember my surprise when I first found out that archery was considered a socially acceptable sport for women of wealth in the 18th century.
Never the less, women have been doing archery for many years and I wanted to make sure that Her Ladyship had some sporting attire. So, I selected two sports I knew have long been considered “okay” for women of means- riding and archery.
(Plus the Hunger Games gave archery this strange new allure amongst the young folk, or so I am told.)
In page three here, we have the riding habit on the left, complete with hat and a slightly shorter skirt that would have been useful on a horse. I should add that I have never ridden a horse. In fact, horses are huge and they kinda scare me.
Her archery costume was inspired by similar costumes from the Regency period. I don’t know how practical it would be for archery, but I really think practicality is over-rated and paper dolls never complain.
Back in the early days of the interweb when I built my first, and perhaps best forgotten, paper doll site, images were generally small. They look a long time to load and things like Pinterest didn’t exist- neither did really any Social Media.
In those days images were best kept small, but today we can get away with much larger images and I like large images. They are pretty. One of the things I have been doing is working on reformating a lot of the images on the blog to be larger and easier to see.
This is a very long way of saying that today’s Flock magnetic paper doll post is in a different format then my other Flock posts. Let me know what you think in a comment…
Meanwhile, I am dabbling again with Noir Punk, or as I think most know it, Diesel Punk. Personally, I like my name better. Basically, it’s vintage styled clothing of the 1930s and 1940s combined with a punk aesthetic.
I do not offer a link to the PNG to print for my magnetic paper dolls, because you shouldn’t print them from the PNG. The PDF allows the image to be properly sized to the page and therefore to the dolls.
Anyway, here is Wren, named for a bird, showing off her shoes and hats. I really do like the hats and I think they are fun for the Flock magnetic paper dolls. Magnetic paper dolls are fun.
Wren is here with some retro clothes and corsets, because that’s what everyone needs. I love the boots, personally. Next week, there will be another set of these with Wren showing off page two of these outfits.
I’ve dabbled in this style before and you can see that Starling set of Punk Noir if you like. I’m not sure how I feel about the colors on this set, but for the moment, I like them.
Monica is the newest member of the Marisole Monday & Friends family and she hasn’t gotten to have as many adventures as some of her paper doll friends.
