Imperial Elegance: An Hanfu and Kimono Inspired Fantasy Paper Doll

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This pair of fantasy gowns were heavily inspired by hanfu, which are traditional Chinese clothing, specifically those of the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). However, this has about as much in common with actual historical Chinese clothing as this paper doll has in common with actual historical English clothing. That’s to say- not a whole heck of a lot.

Rarely have I had a set that I have more trouble with coloring. This gave me fits! I initially planned on the two dresses coordinating, but then decided that seemed boring, so broke out and did two very different color schemes inspired by seasonal Japanese colors. (Yes, I know hanfu are Chinese, not Japanese, but again- this is fantasy clothing.)

In Japan, traditional kimonos are styled with seasonal color schemes. So, I tried to base these color schemes on traditional seasonal colors of Japan. One dress uses February colors, crimson and purple. The other dress uses March colors which are peach and khaki. The Kimono Lady, a defunct blog, has a really detailed write up about March colors here. I had a little more trouble finding references for February colors, but this yukata influenced the colors I chose.

I love color, but I find my own eye attracted to specific color schemes. It’s really valuable to see how different cultures combine colors. I never would have used purple and crimson together in the way that I did, but once I did it- I really loved how graphic it made the dress.

Yellow & Blue Medieval Fantasy Gowns

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Today’s fantasy printable dress-up doll has a pair of medieval inspired gowns with girdles, swords and books, of course. Because all paper dolls are happier with books.

When I’m in the mood for some “basic fantasy,” I tend to go back to medieval stuff. Not the actual medieval period, but rather what the Victorians thought the medieval period was. It’s all big castles, princesses in fancy dresses, dragons, and noble knights. In a nod to actual medieval gowns which were worn over kirtles or underdresses, I like to add the layers. You can see more of this sort of thing on my fantasy medieval Pinterest board if you’re curious.

I confess though that these aren’t the most unusual or inspired pieces for me, but I feel like I am stretching myself enough with the digital art thing without trying something totally new.

I chose the colors for these dresses from classic Norwegian design and old-fashioned children’s book illustrations. I used yellows, blues, and soft ocher shades to make them feel cozy and cheerful, like a sunny day or a calm, clear sky. These colors remind me of curling up by a fire with a big picture book.

And since I was thinking of books, I drew some books to be accessories along with swords. I like drawing books. It’s the librarian in me.

This is the first sort of fantasy set for the Ensemble Eclectica series. My hope is always that this fantasy printable dress-up doll will inspire imaginative play and storytelling. That’s the best part of playing with paper dolls, isn’t it? While I’ll admit that I have been on more of a modern clothing kick as of late, don’t worry. Eventually, I’ll come back to fantasy, sci-fi and other elements. I always do.

A Colorful Tropical Beach Printable Paper Doll

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I rarely get a chance to do something that has this many different outfit possibilities while also being just a one page set. This has 19 different outfits while also being only 10 mix and match pieces. Could it be more? Yes, I did the math once and realized that the most outfits you could ever get from 10 pieces was 25. That would be 5 tops and 5 bottoms which gets you 25 different clothing options.

I have a whole post about calculating clothing options if you feel like having some fun with math. There’s a formula. My best friend in college went on to become a math teacher and while I never will be a big math person, whenever math comes up I think of her.

I got some great name suggestions, but ended up deciding on Ensemble Eclectica, after trying out a few different options including “Wardrobe Wonderland Wanderings” or “Fashion Fantasy Frolics”. I think those two were a little too long.

Anyway, for technical reasons (and because I had a fantasy dress that I could not fit on the page), I ended up resizing these dolls down a bit and redoing some of the formatting. So, the next few after this one will looking a wee bit different. I already updated the PDF files and things from last week’s version.

Galactic Fashions: Another Printable Paper Doll

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So, I wanted to experiment with texture and style. I wanted to see if I still liked the effect of noise texture if the style was less romantic and more something else.

And well, clearly, that something else should be space princesses.

I’m actually really happy with how it came out. I played around with the texture in a way that I think worked well- a larger scale noise effect in the background, but something more subtle for the doll herself. I’m actually very pleased with that part.

Something about this paper doll keeps making me think of 1980s and 1990s cartoons of my childhood like the X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and She-ra. I was a huge She-ra fan as a kid. One of my friends had a bunch of the She-ra action figures and we would play with them for hours in her bedroom and on her porch. I have a lot of fond memories of that.

All in all this was an successful experiment. I confess I’ve been frustrated a bit with working in Procreate lately (which I think is 100% normal when trying to learn a new skill), so we’ll see how I feel about everything in a few more days.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: Sci-Fi Wardrobe

A black paper doll coloring page with a sci-fi theme.

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So, as I was finishing up my next batch of Stylish July Paper Dolls, I decided to try to share them in groups based on theme. I figured that was a better option and more logical and then just trying to dump a bunch of stuff all at once and share like six things today to get caught back up to where I should be. There will be three today and two shared over the next two days. That’ll get us all caught up.

To start with, here’s three different sci-fi outfits all inspired by Star Trek. I love Star Trek. I’ve become a huge fan of both Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, because they both seem to understand Star Trek in a way most of the newwer Trek hasn’t. Anyway, they were the primary inspiration for these paper doll outfits.

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I got this great book on Star Trek costumes called Star Trek Costumes (okay, obvious title) and I think it’s where I learned that one of the things they did in The Next Generation era Star Trek is that they didn’t have visible fasteners in general on clothing. It’s subtle, but it does actually make the clothing feel just a little… different. In high def you can totally see the zippers, but in the original definition, they would have been invisible to the viewer at home.

It’s really actually kinda a cool thing to notice. It somehow works really well.

So, I was thinking about that when I designed these sci-fi inspired paper doll pieces.

Is she a space explorer? Is she a space princess? I had no idea, but I did have fun and that’d what matters.

Tomorrow, there will be evening gowns!

A Stylish Paper Doll July: Braids & Strawberries & Sundresses

A black paper doll with braids as a coloring page. Her dress is a crisp empire waisted sundresses with a midiskirt.

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Inspiration:

  • The Attempt to Make a Braid Brush

One of the cool things about Procreate is that you can build your own brush shapes. One of the things I wanted to try was building a braid brush. I tried to follow this tutorial which was excellent, but the results weren’t what I really wanted.

In the process, I became sort of obsessed with drawing a paper doll with box braids- hence how I ended up here with this cute little black paper doll with braids. Because once I get an idea in my head, I tend to try to push through.

Or I don’t. It really depends.

While there’s a few things I would do differently next time, I think the braids came out pretty well. I didn’t figure-out how to make a functional braid brush, but I’m not crying over that. I am not convinced that I like brushes- I mean, I like brushes, but some of the shaped ones are not as useful as I’d have thought if you’d asked me when I started with Procreate. I don’t love how they look and I sort of like hand-drawing things, because I like to draw. If I was working in color, I might feel differently.

I think playing around with the sizes of line gave me a lot of the texture I was looking for and, as a first try, the hair looks pretty dang good. So, I’m proud of it.

Today’s paper doll is part of a series of paper dolls I sketched out all the at the same time (I was in an airport), each of which had a single summery outfit (mostly dresses) and different patterns on their underwear. There will be two more that I’ll share tomorrow and the next day.

For this one, I designed a strawberry and polkadot pattern. There were also flowers, but the flowers looked way too much like the polkadots from a distance, so they didn’t make it to the final finished piece. One thing I am still learning is how thing scale and resize when working purely digitally. The ability to zoom in and zoom out messes with me.

Additionally, this paper doll did inspire me to work on a strawberry themed Lolita dress which I hopefully will finish before the month is out. I think I will. It’s nearly done. I wanted to practice ruffles and that seemed a great way to do that.

Spring Princess Gowns for Jade

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Sure, there’s still like feet of snow on the ground here and sure yesterday the high was under freezing at 29 degrees, but it is spring darn it! (Signs of spring include a longer day, muddy streets, and trees that are starting to bloom.) It’s just been a much colder spring than usual, but I would rather have a long slow slide into break up than a rapid one, so I’ll take it.

I will also complain loudly about it.

I can have contradictions in my life.

All righty, so let’s talk paper dolls. Back in 2019 or 2020 or something, I started drawing some very fancy big-skirted princess gowns that I called the Princesses and Their Gowns collection. Not really because I thought it would be a big collection, but because all the gowns used the same basic color scheme and style, so I figured it would be simple enough to group them together.

All of last years additions to the collection ended up being Patreon content, so I knew I wanted to add some more for this year and make them blog content.

I chose daffodils to decorate these gowns, because my mother always planted them and they were a favorite flower of mine. I remember my mother would always order her bulbs in the fall and sometimes they wouldn’t arrive until after the ground was frozen and, not about to let that stop her, she’d go out with boiling water and spade to plant them anyway. They always came up, one way or another.

My other favorite flower is peonies which has nothing to do with this paper doll set, but are gown up here and are just amazing in a few weeks when the farmers’ market reopens.

So, do you have a favorite flower? Let me know in a comment!

DDJ: A Renaissance Fantasy Princess Printable & Her Gowns

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Maybe because I saw Ever After at a young age, but I have a deep affection for Italian Renaissance inspired gowns and these are a few of them. Fantasy paper dolls rival historical paper dolls as some of my favorites to draw. This set of printable fantasy paper dolls is from my Dolls Du Jour series, lovingly known as DDJ. Named by a Patron (thank you!) these paper dolls are part of my goal to make some more curvy paper doll ladies. Each doll is named after a time or day, so this is Twilight.

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Opal in Sea and Sky Queen

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While I am not an anime fan myself, I watch it occasionally with my partner. I’m always intrigued by the beautiful gowns worn in these shows. Often vaguely called, “ancient Chinese empresses” costumes, today’s paper doll gowns are mostly inspired by fantasy dresses on Pinterest like this one and this one. Personally, I don’t know my Chinese dynasty clothing well enough to really begin go try to pin down the source silhouette.

Opal’s beautiful up-do comes from the depths of my brain and doesn’t have much in the way of historical/cultural sourcing. I just like drawing absurd up-dos, as you have probably already figured out by now.

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Fantasy Pretty Paper Doll Dresses for Printing and Playing

Sometimes, I just want to draw pretty paper doll dresses.

Okay. I pretty much always want to draw pretty dresses for paper dolls. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing variety (like this fisherman set), but I think anyone whose a regular here knows my first loves are the fantasy and historical stuff. And the fantasy stuff is easier than the historical stuff, because there’s no research involved.

Don’t get me wrong, I love research, but sometimes it’s fun to let that go and just play.

Printable coloring page of cute and pretty paper doll dresses for kids of all ages. Three dresses, one doll and two pairs of shoes.

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These pretty paper doll dresses were vaguely inspired by the empire silhouette of the early 19th century and the off the shoulder dresses of the 1980s. Basically. there’s nothing here that’s historically accurate, except that these are dresses. That’s about it. There’s a dress.

That’s where it ends.

Some super cute and pretty paper doll dresses for kids of all ages to print and play with. Three dresses, one doll and two pairs of shoes, plus accessories.

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I had drawn a specific version of Sapphire for this set, but I wasn’t in love with her hair and after trying to fix it like 17 times, I gave up and recycled an older Sapphire design from last year.

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