Pixie and Puck: Pirate Nammu in Black and White

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{Click Here for a PDF of Nammu Page 1} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Nammu Page 1}

I was asked by a reader to do my Nammu pirate paper doll in black and white. She was posted in full color back in November. So, it only took… um…. six months for me to get my act together. Seriously, it might have taken longer, but I was feeling guilty.

Normally, I save the paper dolls in a file with all the layers broken up. The color is on one layer and the line work is on another layer and than the heavy black borders, which I add last, are on a third layer. This time, I saved the file with those layers merged, so I didn’t have a separate line-work layer to work with. Since I didn’t want to redo a lot of work, I tried using Photoshop to remove the color from the paper doll set. I can sat with utter confidence that this worked better than expected, but not as well as I would have liked.

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{Click Here for a PDF of Nammu Page 2} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Nammu Page 2}

I will spare everyone a list of the things that I think didn’t turn out quite right, but the quality of the line work is not what I hoped it would be. Never the less, a black and white Nammu is better than no black and white Nammu, so hope whoever asked for it (and I honestly can’t remember who that was) is pleased with the outcome. And besides, once you color her, I don’t think my insecurities about the line work will be obvious.

Some people have expressed fear that the Mini-Maidens will replace Pixie and Puck in my heart and I hope that this Pixie paper doll reassures people that I still love the Pixie and Puck paper dolls.

Påklædningsdukker… or I just found out how to say Paper Doll in Danish…

paper_doll_around_the_webI recently received a very kind email from a reader letting me know that påklædningsdukker is Danish for paper doll. This, of course, caused a flurry of Google searching to track down paper dolls I might have missed around the web since many non-English sites never get indexed if you don’t know the right language keywords. (I’d insert a rant here about imperialism, the roman alphabet, the English language, and the internet, but really… I don’t think anyone cares…)

While I was searching Karen’s Blog came up often. I’ve linked to her blog on my Links page for a while, but for those of you who haven’t visited, I recommend her site very highly. Karen’s paper dolls are beautifully drawn in black and white or color and her stuffed animals and horses are some of my favorites.

A collection of paper dolls from what looks like the Danish version of Women’s Day.

Vintage paper doll post cards from the 1950s, I think.

Princess Razibor and her son I am also thinking from the fifties. The mild nudity (and I do mean mild) is interesting for me when I think about how nervous we are in the United States about any nudity at all.

A collection of mother and baby (or Nanny and baby) paper dolls, the different styles through time are quite illustrative of artistic movements. There’s more of the collection if you click on the left side bar links.

A cute paper doll named Liv (I think?), I couldn’t find the source site.

I hope everyone enjoys the paper dolls in Danish. I certainly had fun tracking them down and learning a word in a new language.

Phoenix & Smoke: Male Printable Paper Doll in Black and White

Hey, It’s a MAN.

The most commonly requested thing for the blog, outside of sometimes asking for more things in black and white, is for a boy for Marisole Monday. I know this has taken a long time to happen and I don’t regret that. I drew about seven versions of this pose before I finally had one that I felt didn’t look like he was HUGE next to Marisole and her friends or looked like he was creepily androgynous (not in metro-sexual way, but rather in a… disturbing alien sort of genderless way).

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

So, today we have the first of the males of Marisol Monday. Since the girls are Marisole, Mia and Margot, it seems only fitting to give the first of the boys an M name as well. After some thought, I have settled on Marcus. Though I have been often asked for a boyfriend for Marisole, I am not defining Marcus’ role. He could be a friend, a brother, or a lover. There’s no reason to be hetronormative with Marisole Monday. I should also add that since the Marisole Monday family is growing, I’ve renamed the sets “Marisole Monday & Friends” and will probably be redesigning their logo in the future.

I am going to confess right now that I don’t know how many Marcus’ dolls I will do. I have two other sets in the works, but as I have mentioned before, I find men’s clothing really dull for the last two hundred years or so. I work on a college campus and so I get a fairly good look at what young men wear these days and well… I just can’t imagine drawing hoodies and jeans for the rest of my life. I’m not say there won’t be other boys in the Marisole Monday world, but they probably won’t be too common.

This is Greta: A New Black & White Printable Paper Doll

Okay, so news: After some deliberation I settled on Natalie’s suggestion for a name “Mini Maidens”, though I have to mention that DotRot’s suggestion of “Faye and the Holidaze” was probably the one that made me laugh the hardest. I have a soft spot in my heart for alliteration. I want to thank everyone for entering, since I hate naming things.

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the Rest of the Series}

Greta is the new Mini Maiden and she shares a face with the Valentine’s day doll. I’ve made a new category for the Mini-Maidens with separate subcategories for Faye and Greta, since those are the two members at the moment. Passover in on the horizon, but I don’t think I’ll be doing a Passover paper doll. Though a mini-bowl of matzo ball soup might be worth it…

Anyway, I hope everyone likes the Mini Maidens and their new place among the serial dolls on the site. They aren’t on the Index page yet. With one thing and another last night, I forgot to make them an icon, but they’ll be added soon.

Hey! I’m on Youtube…

So, Light Messages Publishing recently used a few of my sets to create a really neat video trailer for their book Can’t Buy Me Love by Summer Kinard who blogs at Write Like a Mother.

I confess that I haven’t read the book (its not out yet), but I’m flattered and excited to see my work used in such a fun and creative fashion. It’s hard to say no to a book about love and lucha libre.

Plus the video is really cute. Bonus points to anyone who can name the different sets used.

P.S. I am embarrassed that I had to look up both “freegan” and “yarn bombing”, clearly I am out of the loop on such things.

Maurader Princess Paper Doll in Color

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

Margot, Maurader Princess has returned.

And this time, it’s personal…

Okay, so it’s no more personal than last time, but I was trying to be dramatic.

Whenever a friend of my comments to me in the real world about my blog updates, I am sort of shocked. I forget that people you know.. read this and they also, you know, know me and they might actually have opinions.

Not that I expect them to. Most of my friends are male and most of my male friends are probably just don’t really care about paper dolls to begin with, though they are supportive of my hobby and for that I am grateful.

So, I am running a contest to name the new paper doll series. You can enter until Friday when I’ll choose my favorite as a winner and the winner gets a custom paper doll, so that should be useful incentive. Plus you’ll receive highly limited fame amongst a small, but dedicated audience.

Meet Faye: A New Paper Doll Series is Born

Some of you probably remember my Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day Paper Dolls which I did last month. After I did them, I found myself drawing a lot more for this pose. So, I decided to actually name the first of the dolls. I have named her Faye, after a Chinese foreign exchange student I knew in graduate school. Her wardrobe, like that of my grad school friend, is girly and a hint of boho. I haven’t updated the Printable Paper Doll Index with her yet, but I will be soon. Probably this weekend.

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print{Click Here for the Rest of the Series}

By the way, the new series needs a name. So, I am asking for recommendations for a good name for these little paper dolls. I’ll select my favorite from the comments in a week (Friday the 22nd) and the winner will get a custom paper doll set of their choice.

It’s been a while since I did a contest and so the rules are as follows:

    1. 1. You can enter up to three names.

 

    1. 2. You can only win one contest a year.

 

    1. 3. I will announce the winner on the blog on the day the contest ends. I will also email the winner at their email address attached to the comment. If I do not hear back from the winner within a week, I will use a random number generator to select the next

winner

    1. .

 

    4. The winner will receive a one page custom paper doll based on one of my paper doll series within a month of the end of the contest. Sometimes life gets in the way of this goal, but I will email the winner if that is the case and we can make other arrangements.

So, enter your paper doll series names and we’ll see what we’re going to call this new set of paper dolls.

Twelve Museums with Searchable Online Costume Collections

This post could be subtitled: How to waste time looking at pretty dresses…

I used to have a Research Resources page, but it never got updates and I know from my stats was basically ignored, but I think tracking down this sort of stuff on the internet is fun (I am a librarian, what do you expect?), so here are a few museums which have strong costume collections that you can view online and that I use when I’m looking for research sources.

Two things people should know:

    1. The number of costume pieces which predate 1700 is limited, but not non-existent. I have tried to note when a museum has pre-18th century holdings.

    2. These are in the order which I bookmarked them and doesn’t resemble any actual ranking of quality.

Okay, here we go….

Contains something like 50,000 costumes and textile artifacts from the mid-18th century to the present, the Chicago History Museum Costume Collection is one of the largest in the world. Not everything is available on line yet, but those which are have beautiful quality photos and some include CT scans showing the interior construction of the garments (which is totally useless for paper dolling, but totally cool never the less.)

Browse a selection of objects from the Fashion Museum collection, or search the selection for a specific term using the search box or menus. The photo’s aren’t the best, but the Fashion Museum has some stuff that is hard to find elsewhere, including an excellent collection of regency dresses.

Searchable database which is wonderful, but the collection can also be browsed by costume themes such as clothes for work or sports and includes some unusual pieces like early archery dresses and information.

Okay, so I didn’t know that Indianapolis had such a stellar costume collection until a few months ago, but they really do have a stellar collection. The color photos are lovely, but there is some variation in quality. Like a lot of collections in the United States, the strength of the material comes from the 19th century.

Be sure to search the “online catalog” as well as check out the Costume Gallery. The Gallery contains only a few of the costume pieces owned by the Kent State Museum, the rest are in the catalog and the catalog contains several hundred thousand pieces, though not all are costume related. I don’t know why Kent State has such a strong collection, but they do and they are all lovely- especially their 18th century pieces.

The KCI Digital archives is a wonderful source organized by date, but not a large one. If you can find a copy, their book Fashion is incredible.

Searchable by date, type or region, the collection is massive. Unlike a lot of other collections, LACMA has a fair number of things that are pre-18th century.

The Met’s database covers the entire collection, including their costume materials. Recently, the Brooklyn City Museum gave the Met their costume collections and so there are some really outstanding pieces from that collection available. Like LACMA, the Met is large enough to have pieces that predate the 18th century.

Mostly 20th century, and mostly high fashion, the FIT’s collection is small enough to browse, but large enough to be diverse. I hope they add more to it in the coming years, because I’m sure this only scratches the surface of what the school actually owns.

Search the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to find beautifully photographed costume pieces from around the world. Their Chinese material is particularly strong, though their photos are a little small.

There is so much at the V&A that it is a little overwhelming. Not every photograph is useful, but the huge amount of material is well worth it. V&A has some of the best pre-18th century materials available.

The MFA owns pieces ranging from Middle Eastern rugs to African kente cloths to haute couture fashions to American stays. Their collection is sprawling to say the least, but incredibly useful.

This isn’t isn’t complete. I know there is material out there from other museums, but I wanted to showcase a few that I find particularly useful. Did I miss anyone’s favorites? Are there some I should know about? Do people find these sorts of things useful?

Maurader Princess: Paper Doll Coloring Page

Today we have Margot and apparently she’d decided to become a brigand and rob from either the rich or the poor… though robbing from the rich does have the advantage that they have stuff unlike the poor who are, generally, poor. I wanted to call this set pirate something, but I didn’t want to use the word pirate, so I went in search of a synomyn and came up with maurader. And yes, I was thinking of Xena: Warrior Princess when I added the word princess to the title.

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{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

I know I’ve mentioned my weird love of that show on this blog before. Speaking of shows I like, I did see the latest Grimm episode on Friday, during which I did draw paper dolls, and while I enjoyed the show, I was struck with how exposition filled it seemed. I thought it was sort of weak. I hope for better things soon enough.

I feel like this Margot paper doll could be friends with my Gypsy Rose who exists in black and white and color. It’s weird to me to think that I posted that set just under two years ago. I can see a lot of things I still need to improve and a few things that have improved.

So, it’s pretty late on Sunday as I write this and I really should be getting into bed since once I start talking about my TV show watching habits, I know there’s a problem. By the way, did anyone else see the new Grimm episode and what did they think?… or you can comment on the paper doll. That would be cool too.

Jacqueline: A Paper Doll In Four Different Color Schemes

Clearly, I got bored last weekend and decided that what I needed to do was color a paper doll set in three different color schemes, because I couldn’t make up my mind.

Actually, there was a fourth color scheme, but it looked bad and didn’t get as far as being posted.

jacqueline-black-white jacqueline-spring-time

{Click Here for a PDF of Jacqueline: Black and White} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Jacqueline: Black and White} {Click Here for a PDF of Jacqueline: Spring Time} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Jacqueline: Spring Time}

jacqueline-winters-day jacqueline-brights

{Click Here for a PDF of Jacqueline: Winter’s Day} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Jacqueline: Winter’s Day} {Click Here for a PDF of Jacqueline: Brights} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Jacqueline: Brights}

I think I might have a problem. I can’t keep doing this with Pixie paper dolls, because it’s darn time consuming and yet… I wonder what she’s look like in a red and blue color scheme? See… this is why I have a problem.

So, I put up a Terms of Use statement recently. The truth is that I probably should have done it a while ago, but sometimes I forget that I’m not talking to myself when I write on this blog. So, none of the terms on it are really different than they ever have been, but I think it clarifies a few things. As always, if you have any questions about anything, feel free to email me. I check my email every most days. I’m working on recoding the FAQ page as well.