I’ve been pretty sick this weekend, and I wasn’t sure I was going to get this up, but I’m on antibiotics now and am writing this between naps.
(When I’m sick, I nap a lot.)
I always say that I don’t do a lot of blond paper dolls, but I think I might do more than I realize. I do have a deep love of red hair. Anyway, I’ve done maybe thirty blond paper dolls over the years and a lot of those were because of multiple colored hair like on my Delaney paper doll or Spikes and Pleats paper doll set. Anyway, the girl who asked for this paper doll is blond, so I decided a blond paper doll made the most sense.
An random interesting fact- The the white and red uniform is actually based on a photo of what the majorettes at the university I work for wore in the 1960s. We no longer have majorettes. I thought about doing the uniforms of some of the other area university majorettes, but a lot of the costumes were bit too skimpy or involved a lot of illusion netting. Because I want the paper doll outfits to be interchangeable among the various paper dolls regardless of skin tone, I tend to steer clear of putting skintone on the outfit pieces…. except shoes, where I can’t seem to avoid it.
As I mentioned earlier, I am sick, so I don’t know if I’ll get much posted this week. I have some stuff ready, but nothing pre-scheduled.
There are a few perks of knowing me in the real world. One of those perks is that when you ask for a paper doll set, it is a lot more likely to actually happen. It might take a little while, but eventually it will happen.
This request only took me a year to get to. I was asked to do a baton twirling or majorette paper doll by a young women I know who was one in high school.
Now, I’ll admit that I had no idea there even were baton twirlers anymore. I think it might be a Southern thing. I certainly don’t recall any on the West Coast and definitely not in Alaska where I grew up. If you have a chance though, do check out youtube for baton twirling. It’s pretty amazing watching someone who really knows what they are doing. Definitely a remarkable skill.
So, while I know nothing about baton twirling other than what I could learn on the internet, this paper doll was fun to draw and I hope I didn’t mess up anything too badly. After all, I’d like my baton twirling fans (if I have any) to be pleased. By the way, one thing I did notice, is a lot of baton twirling outfits are similiar to skating costumes, so I think Margot could share with my ice skating Marisole.
One thing I did notice is that a lot of modern majorette costumes use a lot of illusion netting. I decided against the appearence of illusion netting in my costumes. I also found that my favorite outfits were those from the fifties and sixties, much more than I liked the costumes today. Margot has a few old fashioned outfits, along with boots with tassels, and a few modern outfits.
I gave her a normal baton, a sword baton and one on fire. Everything is better on fire.
So, any majorettes (current or former) out there want to tell me how I did?
First things first, I’m sure many people are curious about who won the contest (I mean, at lease the people who entered it.) As I did last year, I decided to have two winners of my end of the year drawing/contest. Congrats to Mag15 and Kitrona who were selected by the highly scientific process of counting the unique comments and using Random.Org to select a winner.
Meanwhile, onto the paper dolls…
Sometimes, I get a little carried away playing with color schemes. I think the color scheme can really change the whole look of a paper doll set. It can go from sweet to saucy to historical. It’s a fun aspect of drawing and designing paper dolls.
The first color scheme is winter white with pale blue/grey in neutrals. The various colors to set off the neutrals are a deep grey purple and two shades of pink. The doll’s skin color is a warm redbrown and her hair is black. The darker skin tone will be set off by the winter white.
I rarely do blond paper dolls, but I really loved the bright pink coat and it reminded me of Barbie. Barbie is blond, so Audra became blond for this set. The neutrals are several shades of light warm grey. The accent color is a denim blue.
Clearly, I was enjoying my pink and blues. Both these sets came out much more similar in color scheme than intended. I had a great deal of fun coloring these sets.
It has been a long time since I did a paper doll devoted to coats (my last one was Delia), but there are so many cute coat styles out this year. I just went recently (okay, two months ago) and bought myself a bright purple winter coat, which I totally love, but there are tons of over beautiful coats on the market.
I also wanted to go with boots, since it is boot season. Most Pixie paper dolls get one pair of shoes, but since Audra’s wardrobe is pretty exclusively coats, I thought two pairs of boots would stretch things out a bit. I didn’t notice how crooked the dress’s neckline was until I posted it. Sorry about that. Asymmetrical is in, right?
Remember to cut along the doll’s shoulders, so she can wear the coats. I think some of them will fit over things and some of them won’t. I wanted to do a few fitted jackets, though I tried to make them large enough for layering. (I confess I didn’t test them extensively.)
I wanted to play around with coats and also with different color schemes. I actually colored this set three times. This is the first version, I’ll post two more next week. The version below is all blues and purples.
I tend towards warm colors myself- reds and pinks and things. I wanted to try to do a set with none of those colors, except in her red hair. I went with purples, blues and pale green. Grey is the neutral in this set and I do love the color grey. I must own at least a half-dozen grey pants.
Tomorrow, I’ll announce the drawing winner (it closes tonight at midnight) and show off my two other color schemes for this set.
This is going to be an uber short post today, because I really have a million things to do. Still, I have neglected the blog for a week and I didn’t want to keep neglecting it.
Sometimes, I feel like it is a small monster. If I don’t feed the blog monster, it might someday hunger for the souls of children or possibly lollipops. Either way, it is in my best interest to make sure that it is fed.
Anyway, today we have the Marcus paper doll from last way up in full color. The designs are based on my whole pseudo-Medieval/Viking thing. I really wanted to stick with earth tones and simple colors, nothing too crazy or vivid.
Right now, there’s a little drawing/contest and it’ll be wrapping soon so go enter if you haven’t. It closes on the 14th, winner announced on the 15th.
Starting off 2015 with a Marcus 2.0 paper doll as my first Marisole Monday & Friends set. I wanted to do a Marisole doll for 2015, but I didn’t have done finished and this was finished, so up it goes. In total, there were 23 new Marisole Monday & Friends designs posted last year which I think is fairly close to a personal best. I haven’t checked my previous years to find out.
I’m pleased with how he came out. I really like the boots and the two pairs of leggings give him more outfit options for a total of six. Not bad for a six piece set. He’ll be up in full color next week. After that, I hope to have my Majorette paper doll done which I promised someone. Before moving to the South, I didn’t actually know that anyone did baton twirling anymore. You learn new things everyday, I suppose.
Right now, there’s a little drawing/contest so enter that if you wanna.
Okay, so as I mentioned, I’ll be posting some stuff in the next few weeks with the 2014 date on it. That’s because I date things from when I save them, not when I post them on the blog and I’ve got some backlog to go through. Never the less… first post of 2015 and I am going to celebrate that.
In 2015, Greta’s Trousseau is steadily growing. She’s traveling to the seaside with her paper wardrobe to deep sea dive, swim and also, you know, walk around looking fashionable.
Her costumes are, left to right, a diving suit (because who doesn’t have one of those in their wedding trousseau?), a traveling suit, slightly fancier than the last one I posted, a swimming costume with flippers and a spear for fending off aggressive sea-life and a walking dress, because sometimes a girl just wants to look good while walking along the beach.
For those counting this takes Greta’s Trousseau to just over sixty pieces and 21 distinct outfits. Wow. Of course, she can share with her friends Isadora, Hazel and Faye. It’s not like she’s the only one who can wear these outfits.
Next up for her paper doll wardrobe is probably going to be more sporting outfits, including golf, croquet and tennis. I also have a set with a morning dress and a nightgown in the wings.
Embarrassing confessions of a paper doll blog owner: I drew this set of clothes over a year ago. Over a year!
And I am just now posting them.
There is no good reason for this, except I sorta got wrapped up in other things. Never the less, here they are, just in time for snow rather than rain. Originally, I had planned on calling this set, “April Showers”. It is not april. April is a LONG way off.
In the meantime, I am calling it “Playing in Puddles” and I am very pleased with how these printable paper doll clothes turned out.
Petal is modeling this set. She’s my latest Poppet paper doll and you can print her here, if you haven’t already. Of course, you can print all the Poppets and their clothes. I’m rather pleased to say that there are now 5 different Poppet dolls and six pages of Poppet clothing, not including the outfit that comes with each doll.
I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday time with family and friends.
Nothing exists in a vacuum. This means that anything which is created inevitably is developed from previously existing content. This doesn’t bother me. I love combining diffrent parts to get a unique whole.
This image was not my only inspiration. I was also influenced by traditional Japanese hairstyles and vikings. Everything is better with vikings or pirates or pirate vikings….
Seriously, I should do a set of pirate vikings. I can picture it now… horned helmets and jolly roger flags.
On second thought… maybe I shouldn’t do that.
Moving on… Faye’s world is a harsh one. Her people are known for their skill in leather and silver work. Of a fairly high status, she wears her hair in an elaborate style decorated with a metal ornament. The society travels long distances, mostly by river, and are known for their belief in astrology and careful tracking of the movements of the stars. Their calendars are prized throughout the world for their accuracy. They exist in small townships and a few larger groups. They do not have a centralized government, as we would call it, and form alliances through trade agreements and marriage. They are a largely matriarchal society.
Every printable paper doll set needs to stand alone. This is very important to me. I’d like to think you could just print out and play with this paper doll without needing to print out and play with any others.
In order to do that, I try to have enough paper doll clothes in each set for some variety. I don’t really know how my habit of “two pairs of shoes, at least one pair of pants, one dress, roughly equal tops to bottoms” habit developed in Marisole Monday & Friends paper doll sets, but I certainly have a pattern.
I was feeling like today’s paper doll wardrobe had more tops than bottoms, but it’s really not. Just two more tops for the paper doll than bottoms. There are still about fifty outfit combinations, but maybe the fact that some of the patterns don’t really match each other is what I’m noticing. For example, I wouldn’t put the floral pink and navy top with the navy floral skirt.
Nearly everything I’ve seen for florals this season seems to be fairly dark, so I went with navy for a lot of the background color. The pieces are all meant to feel lady like without being childish. I think florals can fall into the “too sweet” category fairly quickly. Nothing against that look, but it wasn’t what I wanted for this set.
Speaking of florals, and patterns in general, I have a quick poll…
[poll id=”3″]
By the way, if you haven’t checked it out yet… Julie of Paper Doll School is posting a paper doll outfit for every day in December. Support her amazing project by dropping her a comment if you can. It’s such a fun paper doll series.
