So… this is what you might call a paper doll that got to have an evolution. I originally planned on drawing a more typical cyberpunk set, but um…. I was bored at a thing and I started doodling and the outcome was a drawing of one of my Shadowrun character’s named Claudia.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, one of my hobbies is playing table top RPGs. I have several favorites, but one of them is Shadowrun, which just came out with a fifth edition rule set. Today’s paper doll is based on my last Shadowrun character, a technomancer named Claudia and her best-friend, an AI inside a teddy-bear named Douglas. (Technically, Douglas should have a suit and a carving knife, but um… that would be creepy.)
By the way, at this point, you might be wondering if its possible that I have any more socially awkward hobbies and the answer is no, I’m just your normal board-game playing, paper doll drawing special collections librarian who sometimes pretends to be an elf (except not really, because I pretty much dislike elves in general. Don’t ask).
I did a few things differently with this paper doll. I redid the face to be a little more like I imagined Claudia looking. It’s not a Marisole face and it’s not a Margot face. I realize this is unusual which is why I have started a new category in Marisole Monday called Other Friends. I have no idea if I’ll do more “unusual” Marisole Monday & Friends paper dolls, but odder things have happened on this blog.
It’s raining so hard tonight that I find I don’t want to do anything, but curl up on my couch in my sweats and listen to it. Winter has come to Alabama and with it a lot of rain.
So, Marisole has gotten to be green and blue, but Mia never has, so I thought it was high time she got the chance to show a little more variety in her colors.
I’ve been watching the show Cranford from Hulu and have been enjoying it very much. The show is awfully fun and full of beautiful historical costumes. I think it’s supposed to be set in the 1840s, though it’s hard to tell. Some of the dresses have distinctly 1840s silhouettes and other’s are older. Though the town is small and in the country, so it would be a little behind the times. I confess that the 1830s and 1840s are not one of my favorite time periods for ladies dress.
The show often shows beautiful English gardens and I wanted to capture those colors in today’s printable paper doll.
First things first… I forgot to write on the wings that they’re meant to be pasted to the back of the doll. My bad… Sorry.
Secondly, Happy Veteran’s Day. One of these days, I will remember this holiday far enough in advance to do something thematic. Still, I think Veteran’s day is one of the more important US holidays, so I want to thank any of members or former members of our armed services today.
Meanwhile, I’ve had several requests for fairies over the years. I’ve never done one, except for a Halloween set where I did a fairy costume, but other than that I haven’t done many fairy paper dolls.
It’s a rather out of season. I seem to think of flowers and gardens in the summer when they bloom, but I live in Alabama now where the flowers cling on long after the normal times that flowers are supposed to bloom.
(Pansies in January are freakish. That’s all I have to say on that subject.)
Oh, there are some pixie paper dolls which fairy themes, now that I think of it. I did Fleur, Belladonna and Flora. Of course, I suppose having done 3.5 of them is not a bad statistic over the years.
Something about the fall makes me introspective. Maybe it’s the grey days or the excuse to pull out my favorite tweed trousers again or the fact that I can feel the end of the year looming, but even here in Alabama where it’s hardly cool enough to feel like fall- I can see the leaves changing colors and I know that fall has arrived.
Fall introspection takes different forms for different people, but for me it usually focuses on the blog. It’s a little terrifying to think the blog might be turning four in January. If it was a child, it would be in pre-school.
Last week, we got to see today’s paper doll in black and white and here she is now in color. I wanted to go with a shabby chic color scheme and a break from the usual “Steampunk=Brown” mentality. As I always say when I post a paper doll like this, I’m not really sure how one decides if something is steampunk. Never the less, I’m very pleased with how she came out. She’s a Margot paper doll, because I thought Margot needed some love.
Thoughts on where the blog is? Where the blog is going? How it should get there? Please let me know. I know I don’t always respond to comments as quickly as I would like, but I do read every one and I love getting them.
Well… I can say what this isn’t pretty quickly. This isn’t a Halloween printable paper doll. I wanted it to be, but sometimes life doesn’t cooperate.
Instead of a Halloween printable paper doll and her clothes, we’ve got a steampunk inspired neo-victorian Margot paper doll and her clothes. I think the paper doll is just as nice as something more themeatic, but it always seems to me like I should try to follow the seasons on the blog, even though I rarely succeed.
This year nothing really Halloween oriented has happened on the blog. I do hope to get a vampire Pixie paper doll I drew an embarrassingly long time ago finally finished and posted, but the truth is that September was such an insane month for me (wedding & flooded apartment) that I didn’t get any of my Halloween plans finished.
That paper doll collaboration was so much fun that I keep telling myself I’ll get up the energy to organize another one. I just haven’t seemed to have the time. Hmm… this post got a bit more whiny than it started. I do apologize.
Still… part of me is kicking myself for not finishing the flower fairy paper doll I was working on. I’ve had a lot of requests for that and I wanted to have it done for Halloween.
And you might have noticed a new format with this post. It’s something I’m trying out, because I was feeling like the posts on the first page of the blog were all getting a little bit too long. I’m not sure I am going to stick with it. As always, I’d love to hear what you think. Speaking of what people think… there’s a new poll in the sidebar.
So, we had the black and white version of this paper doll set last week. Sometimes, I feel like I don’t do a good enough job linking the full color versions of the paper dolls with the black and white versions of the same paper doll, but then… I also sort of figure that people are smart enough to figure it out. I don’t like treating my readers as though they’re stupid.
Anyway… I had a lot of fun with today’s paper doll.
Her underwear is the same color as the site’s base color which is Hex Code 990033. Her skin is the warmer of my two medium brown colors that I like to use Hex Code d29569 from the Skintone Pallette. It’s got more orange in it than some of the colors I use more often, so I tend to be careful what colors I pair it with. The dresses are a range of colors whose Hex Codes, I can’t remember at present. I wanted to use Jeweltones, but not get too dark. Autumnal without getting into the orange, yellow, red, brown combination.
Anyway, I think I’ve run out of things to say about the paper doll. Enjoy her.
I always have high hopes for October. I mean… it’s Halloween. Could there be a better holiday to celebrate with paper dolls? Any yet despite my idea that I’m really going to be festive, I hardly ever am.
I think I’ve done one Marisole Halloween set (which I didn’t feel like digging around the archives for). I remember fondly Liana’s wonderful Octobers with fantastic costumes and I always think I’m going to do something like that.
Clearly, once again, that didn’t happen.
But hey… here’s some pretty prom dresses/evening wear and it’ll be in color next week. I could say I planned on using halloween colors… but I don’t. I plan on using a lot of teal and maybe some purple.
Secondly, Check out the new layout. It is still in progress and I’m still messing with it a fair bit, but I have high hopes for eventual success with it.
What happened was that I updated my version of WordPress and updated my old theme. Well.. that messed up the formatting and I decided that the right thing to do was finally bite the bullet and redo the entire thing. So, the blog looked schizophrenic for a few days while I tried out new and different themes. Right now, the theme is Mantra and I can only say good things about it. I judge a theme on how much of the CSS I have to rewrite myself and with Mantra the answer has been… shockingly little. Just a few small tweaks to the code. All in all, a very nice and clean theme.
Anyway, I’m not sure how I feel about the new layout, so feel free to comment and tell me what you think.
As for today’s printable paper dolls… I’m posting some more previously colored Marisole’s in black and white. I think they look charming. They’re all very modern though some of them are two years old.
Well, I did a series of seasonal paper dolls- or at least I thought seriously about it- and this one was for Autumn. You can see the Autumn Chic in color and I forgot to give her a background pattern, though I’ve fixed that in my black and white version. Paper dolls without backgrounds just look so sad and empty to me.
Being someone who loves alliteration, I called this paper doll set Candy Coated Couture, which made more sense when she was full color. I think she’s a great example of the importance of mixing neutrals into a colorful scheme to increase mix and match clothing options. Plus did I mention that I love most of her clothing? Now that she’s available in black and white and I think she’s just as cute.
So, now Mia is getting into the act. Here she is off to prom or maybe some sort of red carpet event. I never wear an evening gown in the real world, but paper dolls aren’t meant for the real world, are they? Enchanting Evening in full color is another paper doll where I forgot to put in a background image. It bothers me, though not enough to fix it. I should really fix the apstorphe in Streets of China first… that’s the one that really gets to me.
Anyway, let me know what you think of the new theme and check back later this week. There will be another update. I’m not sure when yet… but it is going to happen.
So, I thought I hated this color scheme. I really did.
Except when I opened the file late last night to check on it and make sure it would go up today, I discovered (to my own shock) that I actually rather liked the paper doll set all of a sudden. I’d planned to write a whiny post about how muddy it all looked…
And now I feel like she has a sort of funky 1970s vibe to her. (That might just be the little afro talking…)
Speaking of afros, there was this woman at the local Target yesterday who had the most amazing afro and I wanted to ask her to stand still so I could draw it, but I decided that would just be creepily stalker-ish, so I simply admired it from a distance.
One of the things people sometimes ask is where I get my color ideas. I’d love to say I create them all from scratch, but the truth is that I create a lot of them from scratch, but I also use Color Lovers. I mention this, because I just discovered a wonderful new site for color pallettes called Design Seeds. I haven’t used Design Seeds much yet, but I think I will soon.
Over the years, I have created a lot of these little dolls made of paper. I have made paper dolls with all sorts of hair, but I was recently asked to make some natural hair dolls. Now, let me make a confession- I know very little about the nuances of black hair politics (except that I have been told by several people that there totally are black hair politics.)
So, today we have a rare attempt at an afro. I had a very kind email requesting more natural hairstyles for Marisole, specifically. Now, I don’t know much about black hair fashions, but I got a magazine and after reading up a little, I decided to try the afro. I don’t think it came out quite right… but hopefully that will be forgiven. I think there is something off about her hairline… anyway, I think my next challenge might be dreadlocks or more work on afros.
So, I probably could have called this Hearts, Denims and Florals without being wrong on the titling front… but I hate coming up with titles. Sometimes, I think it would be easier just to number everything.
First off: Happy Labor Day! I hope those in the United States are having a wonderful holiday, I know I will.
Secondly, I’ve added a new section to the blog for instructions. Some of this information is repeated from the FAQ and some of it has shown up before, around the site, but I thought it would be nice to have it all in one place. Any advice or questions about it would be great, since I’m still trying to figure out what I need to tell people.
