I’m taking a vacation in June from the blog. I hope everyone has an amazing June!
I had thought I would have time to load up a bunch of preplanned content before I left town to get married and you know what? I didn’t, because planning a wedding is super complicated even when you have amazing support. But there will be newsletters! Those I got done.
So be sure to sign up for the newsletter below and you can still get some fun new paper doll coloring pages during the month of June.
When it comes to creativity, I’m a sprinter, not a long distance runner. When people talk about doing one thing very day for ten minutes for a year or two years or ten years, I get twitchy. I don’t work that way. I like to work intensely for short periods and recoup with something else for a while. As I said, it’s a sprinter sort of mentality.
The new Etsy coloring pages with vintage 1940s fashions.
The downside is that I sometimes have ideas and I work on them intensely and then I stop when I lose interest, get distracted, have other things to do, or whatever. One thing I’ve been planning for years has been to do a better job of repackaging my Patreon content for Etsy. I want people to get to engage with the stuff I’ve made there, but also not have to sign up to be a patron if that doesn’t seem appealing. It’s not for everyone and that’s 100% cool with me.
Back when I drew my 1940s, 1930s, and 1960s sets, I intentionally drew more clothing than I knew would fit in my usual paper doll format with plans to use that extra content for some Etsy sets. (Okay, the first time I did it, it was 100% an accident, but like after that it seemed like a good idea.)
Lately, I’ve been having a big of a creative lull. I don’t really feel like drawing and I thought I’d turn to these older pieces and see what I could do with them. After all, sometimes working something that isn’t creative in the same way that drawing is creative helps me get through minor blocks. So, I thought- I’ll focus on layout and some older things I’m proud of and give my brain a little break. Never under estimate the value of brain breaks.
Long story short- there’s a new Etsy coloring page set of 4 pages of 1940s clothing! It’s 50% exclusive and new content and 50% recycled content from the site which has been reformatted. Some of the new and exclusive pieces include an additional doll, overalls, dresses, hats, and a very 1940s evening gown.
Anyway, if you nab one, leave a review, because that always helps. If you don’t want to nab one, 100% cool- enjoy all the free 1940s paper doll content on this blog (there’s a fair bit). If you’d like to join Patreon then you can do that here, there’s a lot of more paper doll stuff over there waiting for a second lease on life.
The other good news is that this did help with my creative lull and I am now working away on a big mermaid collection (probably also destined for Etsy and Patreon) and a dog paper doll for the next issue of Paper Doll Review. Yes, a dog paper doll. No, I’m not 100% certain it was a good idea, but I’m too far along to turn back now!
I don’t mean to brag, but I pride myself on the diversity of my paper doll drawings. I do a lot of different themes, but Alina Kolluri might well give me a run for my money. Her work ranges from animals to mermaids to Christmas to 1960s fashions. Today, I want to look at the two paper doll books of hers I own- Gal Pals Paper Dolls and Mod Brides. These two were a gift, clearly by someone who knows my taste in paper dolls. These are probably the two I would have chosen, because I love historical fashion paper dolls. Both are from Paper Doll Review, but my feelings about them couldn’t be more different.
Spoiler: One of these books I loved so much and one of them I was super disappointed by. Let’s start with the one I didn’t like, so we can end on a high note.
Mod Brides Paper Dolls
Mod Brides is, as one might expect, a foray into 1960s fashions. The book is smaller, measuring 8.5 by 11 inches, rather than 9 by 12. There’s four dolls on the back which confused me a little, because from the cover I would have thought there would have been five, but that’s not really important. I like the cover design, I think it has some wonderful movement and the doily design really echos the flowers in the background and the pop graphic quality of Kolluri’s art.
I confess the rest of the graphic design in the book is kinda boring. The dresses are laid out fine, but there’s no backgrounds and no real attention is paid, it feels, to making the interior shine.
I wish, as always, there had been more variety in the dolls skin tones. The poses are also very stiff, but that’s just Kolluri’s style. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the paper doll’s hair. It didn’t read as super 1960s to me, because it felt like it lacked the volume of the era, but I think some of that was done to accommodate hats and veils, so I 100% understand those compromises.
Mod Brides is stuffed with clothing. It’s a total of 8 pages of very very 1960s fashions with peaches and pistachio greens abounding. It all looks pretty correct to me- including the shapes of the dresses- which for the 1960s are super specific. The lace details on a lot of the clothing are amazing, as is the drape of those veils. As someone who has avoided drawing wedding dresses, because I hate drawing lace, I have to say this felt like a reminder that it is possible to render lace beautifully in line work.
Plus, when you work in white, getting depth is hard. The light grey Kolluri uses really works to her advantage here.
My phone is in focus, but this veil somehow isn’t.
As usual with Paper Doll Review, I am always happy with the quality of the card-stock and the paper. The covers are a little thin, but the paper feels satin smooth. I think it would be a dream to cut. I can imagine spending hours carefully trimming out these little outfits.
Not that I plan to do that, but if I did, I think I would be happy.
So, now for the big problem- I was super disappointed in the quality of the images. So disappointed that I almost didn’t review this book. The entire book looks slightly out of focus. And somehow the blacks aren’t black enough, so it almost feels pixelated. Or like somehow the images were interpolated one two many times by a graphic design program. For whatever cause, the results are disappointing and distracting.
I tried to capture this on camera and I don’t think I really managed to do it. It’s a case, I suspect, of the digital printing being part of the problem.
Because of the image quality, I just can’t recommend picking up Mod Brides. It’s super frustrating, because over all, the book’s content is fun. However, I can’t seem myself ever flipping through it again to just enjoy the visuals.
Let’s move on to a book that I am utterly in love with and will now get to gush about.
Gal Pals Paper Dolls
The Front CoverThe Back Cover
To start with the basics, Gal Pals Paper Dolls has four dolls and a lot of clothing. It’s a 9 by 12 inch book. The cover says 93 fashions and I could get nit-picky about that. There’s probably 93 pieces, but is a purse a fashion? Hmmm… Never the less, I’ve rarely seen a paper doll book so stuffed with clothing. This seems to be a trend with Kolluri’s work and I like it! Each doll has at least a dozen outfits, one of which is a wedding dress. Plus, there’s matching hats and purses for many of them.
The doll’s faces are super cute, the poses feel borrowed from a WW2 magazine which is awesome. I adore their victory roll hairstyles. Can we gush over the Gal Pal’s cover for a minute? It’s maybe the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. The dolls are flowers! Flowers in a watering can!
(Note: I’m like 95% sure this is a reference to 1940s paper doll books where the cover would have cut outs revealing the doll’s faces beneath.)
Also, did I mention that the borders on the pages of clothing for each doll match the doll’s swimsuits? How fun and cute is that. It’s so clearly thought out that it makes me super happy. This is paper doll book design at its best. All over the book the design is top notch. So much glorious attention to detail.
Granting that I didn’t exactly look for sources, within the confines of the highly stylized art, the clothing seems accurate to the era. There’s day dresses, coats, suits… everything. Even though I am not a wedding dress person, how fun is it that every doll has a wedding dress? The one for Patty (bottom left) looks strikingly like what my Grandmother was married in during WW2 (which might be why I photographed it.)
The fact that each doll basically has a micro-wardrobe is such a cool concept. I can totally imagine how much I would have liked this book as a kid. I can picture myself on the couch carefully cutting out each outfit, penciling the doll’s name on the back, and diligently storing them all in little envelopes.
(Yeah, given my paper doll storage habits as a child, I sorta should have known I would end up a librarian.)
So, if you haven’t already guessed, I love Gal Pals! I really have nothing negative to say about it. If you like color, whimsy, and want a fun diversion, here it is. It was wonderful to see a black doll included, though another skin-tone or two would have been nice.
I’m super happy to have added this to my collection. If you don’t own one, go grab it! Gal Pals is the kind of paper doll book that makes my heart happy!
(Also, I don’t think I’ve ever used this many exclamation points in one blog post. I feel like I should apologize to my college writing professors who would be wincing right now.)
I guess, as I finish this up, I think that these books illustrate how important graphic design is to an effective paper doll book and how work by the same artist can strike me totally differently. Even if the image quality of Mod Brides had been up to snuff, Gal Pals is just a better book. So much attention has been paid to all the tiny details and those details matter so much.
As my niece gets older and more ready for paper dolls, I often think about if I would buy the books I review for her. And Gal Pals I 100% would pick her up a copy.
I am super excited today to get to write a little about the latest issue of Paper Doll Review that arrived a few days ago. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can grab it from Paper Doll review or subscribe, which is what I do.
I always look forward to Paper Doll Review when it comes in the mail, though I don’t draw for it that much. I was still recovering from my surgery when the deadline was and I hate recycling old things for the magazine (which I know is silly), so I let this one slide. I sort of regret it, because it is always fun to see my stuff in there along with other artists I super respect.
I am working on an animal paper doll for the next issue and let’s just say- not the easiest thing I’ve worked on!
Renaldo Barnette was the featured artist and his interview was fascinating, plus there were many images of his amazing at. You don’t follow him on Instagram, you should, because there’s always fun stuff to see. His ability to render fabric texture in markers (I think it’s markers?) is awe inspiring.
There was an article about Katy Keene where I learned some things I didn’t know about the history of the comic. A lot of space in the magazine was devoted to the Katy Keen Dress-A-Doll which was fun, but I confess I’m not the biggest Katy Keen fan on the planet. Nothing against her, of course, but there’s a lack of nostalgia for me, because I didn’t grow up with Katy Keen comics I think the same way people twenty years older than me did.
While I was going through the magazine, I noticed that two of my favorite Dress-A-Doll designs by artist Tori Wright had exposed skin. Wright illustrated the doll’s skin tone for those outfits brown, much darker than the Dress-A-Doll figure. It made me wonder what the result of dressing Katy in some of these costumes would have been- a sort of strange paper doll semi-black face? I realized that if I had wanted to dress Katy up in these outfits it felt wrong somehow to do so.
So, I thought, maybe they could have had a second dress-a-doll for those outfits that had brown skin. After that thought, I realized I couldn’t recall ever seeing a Dress-A-Doll in these magazines that wasn’t white. I don’t own enough back issues of Paper Doll Studio (no longer in print) or Paper Doll Review to do a complete survey, but the ones I have this was the case.
If the magazine was going to feature an artist, like Renaldo Barnette, whose rendering of black models is such a feature of his work, surely there could be a black Dress-A-Doll, Katy Keene inspired or otherwise? I’d love to see Barnette’s version of Katy Keene. I bet that would be fantastic.
If you don’t subscribe to Paper Doll Review, I would so highly recommend it! There’s some magical about getting a paper magazine in the mail every few months and I’m always so impressed the articles, layout, and amazing paper doll art featured. I took a few pictures of my favorite pages, but I didn’t want to reveal all the good stuff.
Did you get this latest issue of Paper Doll Review? What did you think of the magazine?
I feel like every time I do one of these “paper doll color collections” I say that the color is my favorite color, but then I really do love a lot of colors and I chose colors I like. I mean, I don’t want to spend a lot of time staring at colors I don’t like. The thing is, I really like all the colors. Teal though has the honor of being the one I own the most clothing in. I was once told I had to stop buying teal sweaters by a dear friend when she pointed out that I owned five.
As I always do, I tried do a variety of themes like steampunk, fantasy and fashion. I don’t have a lot of historical things in teal I did realize when I was selecting pieces for this little showcase. Maybe I should get on more of that, I guess.
All right, it’s time for goal setting. I like goals. I like working towards things. I’m trying not to be too ambitious this year, because I am starting late and sort of feeling still pretty drained as I recover from some medical treatment (nothing life threatening) and also plan my wedding for June (also not life threatening, I hope).
1. 100 Jewels and Gemstones 2.0 Paper Dolls
Currently, there are about 68 Jewels and Gemstones paper dolls on the blog and I’d really like to hit 100 before the end of 2022. If I included all the Jewels and Gemstones paper dolls that I’ve shared on Patreon, I am probably closer, but I think 100 on the blog is the goal. Of course, I’ll still be putting up my monthly Jewels and Gemstones paper doll for my Patrons. Sign up at the 2 dollar level if you’d like to see those.
2. 10 Historical Paper Dolls
When I asked my Patrons, historical paper dolls won for the thing they wanted to see more of. So, since there are ten months left in the year, I’m setting a goal for 10 different historical paper dolls. So far, I have a 14th century one waiting in the wings and a few more that I have ideas for. If there’s a time period you’d like to see, leave me a comment and I’ll consider adding it to my list. Right now, the top of my to do list is the 1980s, which my Patrons requested last year.
3. Send Things to OPDAG for Paper Doll Review
I feel like this is has been a goal in the past and I have failed miserably at it. The next theme is Animals and after that is Mad about Plaid and Checks. I tend to wait until the last minute to do these and then run out of time. So, my goal is to submit something to those two. I actually love drawing checks and hate drawing plaids, so I should be able to do something. Animals does have me a little stumped I confess. I have a cartoony style, but I don’t think it’s super kawaii which I feel like Animal paper dolls should be.
4. Finish Another Book/Print Project
My first ever book project (You can pick up a copy here) was super fun, complex and I really want to do another one. I have an idea even, so I want to try to finish that. I also have other ideas for print projects, but I can’t 100% decide if I am ready to expand my Etsy store in that direction or not. Anyway, another book is doable and that’s my goal for 2022.
5. Continue with the Newsletter for 2022
I love doing my Newsletter, so I want to continue with it for 2022. It makes me happy and I hope it makes other’s happy, too. Sign up here, if you haven’t. There’s a paper doll in every issue.
6. 10 Dolls Du Jour This Year
Yeah, I did like four last year and I feel guilty about it, okay? So, I’m shooting for ten. I like them. I don’t know why I seem to not instinctively want to draw more of them. The paper doll series deserves more love.
And that’s it! So, I’ll check in with these around Rosh Hashanah as I usually do in September to see how things are going. In the meantime, I am should get too drawing, because those 100 Jewels and Gemstones paper dolls aren’t going to draw themselves, let me tell you.
Normally, I have a few paper dolls that I have finished at the end of the year and they over lap into January. As usual, I did this year as well and because of various life events, I decided the best thing to do would be to wait on my round up until I’d posted all of them. I knew I would be away from the site for a while and it seemed the easiest thing for the pre-scheduling I knew I would have to do. As I did with my 2020 round up, I decided to break down the paper dolls into categories.
Contemporary Fashion Paper Dolls
Historical Fashion Paper Dolls
In Chronological Order By Era
Fantasy, Steampunk, Sci-Fi and Fairy Tale Paper Dolls
This was not my most productive year on the blog (though this doesn’t count my Newslettter or my Patreon content), so there were 27 different Jewels and Gemstones paper dolls shared on the blog today, taking the total Jewels and Gemstones 2.0 count to 77, I think? I might be adding that wrong- it would not be the first time. There are, of course, the Patreon exclusive Jewels and Gemstones as well for my 2 dollar and up patrons, so there’s a few more, if I wanted to add them all together.
I always look at my stats at the end of the year and while this is a little early, I think I can still do it. The numbers are always odd, because my most popular post of all time, according to my Google Analytics is this Marisole Monday Black and White Modern Girl post from 2010. Why? Not sure, but I think it has something to do with how Google values “age” of pages and that image is all over Google image search and Pinterest.
To my own surprise, it wasn’t a Jewels and Gemstones paper doll that was my most popular post in 2021, but rather my retro space foray with the Dolls Du Jour (who have been a bit neglected this year… I should draw more for them). Second place goes to my 1860s historical paper doll and another DDJ post gets third place- my foray into fantasy renaissance gowns. The rest of my top 5 slots are taken up by non-paper doll posts (like this book review and my book announcement). I don’t really know if any of this means anything (especially because most people just go to the main page and don’t click into the specific posts, so really… who knows?) But I do find the numbers always interesting.
Since I am in recovery mode from some medical stuff, I am taking a break for a few weeks. I hope to be back for Valentine’s Day in February (because I love Valentines Day paper dolls) and until then I hope everyone has a lovely few quiet weeks.
I’m opening up comments, because I am super curious: What was your favorite paper doll of 2021 as we settle into 2022?
Yes, I like alliteration, let’s move on… Maybe it’s that it’s winter and I always think of red in the winter time, or maybe it is that there’s lots of darkness and snow and I am craving brightness and brilliance.
I love red. It’s one of my favorite colors, but I have to lean towards the blue-red side of the red spectrum. It also occurs to me that in a different context, this entire blog post could be seen as a political creed for Communism… hmmm…
Paper Doll Printables All Wearing Red
When I do these color based collections, I really just skim through the archives and grab things that strike me as “red” which is to say there’s no real logic to the concept. I mean, I hardly plan things to begin with. One thing I do try is to have a variety of the shades of red from the softer red to the very bright racy red!
Stay warm out there in this chilly time of year and wear whatever colors bring you joy.
Something about Halloween makes me think of all things Gothic, so I had planned to share this over October, but something about me and October. I always think- Nothing is going to happen in October and then October always proves me wrong.
There’s probably a lesson there, but I’ll forget it by this time next year.
Anyhow, when I think of gothic fashion, I often end up thinking of what was in style in the early 2000s when I was teenager- lots of low rise pants, corsets and fishtail skirts. I also really like Gothic Lolita, because I get such joy from drawing ruffles.
Twenty Gothic Fashion Paper Dolls to Print and Play With
Putting together this set made me realize that I really should do another Gothic set soon, though I don’t know if I’ll get to it before the end of the year. Life is, as often happens, getting in the way of my paper doll related pursuits, but that’s okay. One of the most wonderful things about the over a decade I’ve been posting on PTP is that it’ll be here when I’m feeling prolific and it’ll be here in times of rest.
I am super excited (and a bit nervous) to present to you all my first ever paper doll book. Based on the contents of Greta’s Trousseau, this steampunk inspired print on demand paper doll book is now available from Lulu. I tried out several print on demand services, but liked best the quality of Lulu’s printing and paper.
The Specs: The book is 6 by 9 inches with a high gloss cover (making it hard to photograph, but super cute in person.) There are 2 dolls, over 60 mix and match pieces over 9 plates, and over 20 different outfits, plus more if you mix and match with gusto. There’s outfits for everything from fencing to balls all printed on satin finished paper.
I bought a few extras when I was doing my photography and I am now ready to pass them along to new loving homes.
To enter, comment on this Patreon post and/or comment on the blog on this post. Be sure to use a working email address, because I’ll need that to contact you!
No purchase is needed to enter and the contest is open to the public if you’re over 18. On the 25th, so one week from now, I will draw two random names and will email the winners. Please don’t give me your mailing address in the comment- save that for a private email, please.
This is open to everyone, even overseas folks, assuming the USPS delivers to your country. Due to Covid-19 and US law, there are a few countries they don’t deliver too, but I don’t think it will come up. (If you’re curious, there’s a list here.)
I am so happy to get to share this two year long project with you all and I want to give a big, huge, thanks to Julie Matthews who steered me through this experience with grace, kindness, and fantastic feedback.
