contemporary

Autumnal Evening Gowns with Amethyst

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It feels funny to me to be talking about autumn when the temp hasn’t been above zero here in at least three weeks. Well, it was warmer when I designed these gowns, I guess. The thing about them that feels autumnal to me is the color scheme. Jewel tones feel like winter and fall to me. Not sure that other people agree with me on that one, but that’s how I’ve always felt about it.

Weirdly, I know these gowns have source images, because I almost never draw formal gowns without using my Pinterest Formal Gowns and Cocktail Dresses board (creatively named), but I’ll be darned if I can find the source images. I usually save them carefully… So, read into that one what you like I guess.

Meanwhile, snow is falling, Hanukkah has begun, and I hope those who celebrate a holiday in the coming months have a wonderful one. As I move towards the end of the year, I always find myself beginning to think about the future and what has been done this year. It’s a funny time of the year for me. I plan to take a few months off soon, so I’ll have time to be contemplative.

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Happy Halloween! Printable Paper Doll Fun!

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Every year, I try to do something Halloween themed. Valentine’s Day and Halloween are, I think, my most consistent paper doll pieces. I like the colors and I like corsets and Halloween seems like a corset heavy holiday.

Her hair is supposed to have a widows peak and I wanted a sort of elegant feeling with these. Some of it is recycled, but I am 100% okay with that. It gave me a place to start. With this set, I had a lot of fun designing patterns. There’s a cute little ghost dresses, pumpkins, and skulls.

I think some fun could be had coloring these as a Halloween party activity. My grandmother used to send us Halloween greeting cards that were often paper dolls and I like to imagine someone sending this to kids or printing it out for them.

My niece is still too young for me to really be sending her paper dolls, but soon… soon.

Meanwhile, stay safe this Halloween and then enjoy!

DDJ: Sweet Summer Scallops with Dusk

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While all of my paper dolls have themes, I think my contemporary fashion paper dolls have themes that are sometimes more subtle or more defined by color than anything else. After all, there’s only so many ways a person can draw a pair of blue jeans. This set was inspired by summer florals and a pair of polka-dot jeans my sister used to own. In my head, I was thinking feminine silhouettes (hence the flutter, tulip and puffed sleeves) and scallops. I included the long denim skirt, because I feel like 1990s fashions are having a revival and long denim skirts feel so 1990s to me.

I wanted to keep the colors soft and pastel without feeling too… childish. I think pastels can go nursery room really fast. For those keeping count at home, this is my 7th Dolls Du Jour paper doll and my second one with Dusk. The last one was this very fancy evening gown set.

There’s also a new paper doll set up on Etsy if you’d like to go check that one out. It’s a three doll set with five pages of fantasy clothing. I imagine it would be super fun to color.

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DDJ: Color Blocking with Twilight

A black and white paper doll with a mix and match wardrobe of 8 clothing pieces.

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A black paper doll with a mix and match wardrobe of 8 clothing pieces.

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Color blocking is one of my favorite fashion themes. I just love how it lets me play with different colors and experiment with how different lines look on a set of garments. I first drew this paper doll set last year, but didn’t manage to actually get it done until a few weeks ago. Sometimes, I am a little slow on finishing up my own artwork.

Let’s not talk about the large number of 80% finished projects lurking on my hard-drive.

By the way, this is only my 6th Dolls Du Jour paper doll. I created this series in May of 2020 as part of my move towards drawing more diverse figures. Figure drawing is my least favorite part of paper doll making and it is the part I think I am worse at. There’s dozens of abandoned attempts at figure drawing in my notebooks. I still don’t think my figures are as diverse as they could be, but I also can only bang my head against the things I don’t like doing so long.

Just let me draw silly shoes and ignore when my people look off, which they often do.

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Summer Crop Tops with Jade

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I am fascinated by the return of crop tops in fashion these days. Unlike in my teenage years, they are now paired with high rise pants which I think is a much more flattering look than the low hip-huggers of the early 2000s. 

All the colors in this set are based on the Pantone 2021 Spring color scheme. 

You will need to cut along the dolls shoulders to fit these items on. I have put a dotted line there, but with the long dark hair it can be hard to see.  

Ruby in Winter In the Country

Ruby, a printable paper doll coloring page, and her eight piece mix and match wardrobe. Her clothing is based on country estate/riding habits.
Ruby, a printable paper doll, and her eight piece mix and match wardrobe in color. Colors inspired by Maine and other parts of the East Coast of the USA.

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Today’s printable paper doll was a chance to explore a trend I was seeing in the winter fashion runways in 2020- a sort of riding habit inspired country estate look. Because so many of these pieces are solid, I opted to not stick to my usual very limited color palette. I gave Ruby glasses. I think she’s the first doll in this series to get glasses, so that’s something to be happy about.

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Flowers and Showers: A Colorful Paper Doll Fashionista

Spring showers bring summer flowers, or something like that. It might be snowing out, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like my summery floral fashionista paper doll options. Jade has a glorious garden inspired wardrobe of both older pieces and a few new ones for added fun. The dress is new, for example and I am super in love with it.

A fashionista paper doll coloring page featuring a curvy black doll and her wardrobe of floral inspired fashions.

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I first created this version of Jade to go with a formal gown, but I decided to separate her from her evening gown and pair her with a more casual wardrobe for a bit of mix and match fun. I am super happy with how her hair came out. There’s nine pieces here with make over 20 different combinations which isn’t bad for one paper doll.

A fashionista paper doll featuring a curvy black doll and her wardrobe of floral inspired fashions.

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It might be snowing outside, but I could use some summery thoughts. So, the color scheme for this paper doll embraces all the colors the world isn’t currently experiencing up here in Alaska. No snowy shades for our fashionista paper doll.

The problem with where I live is not that it snows. It is that is snows and then never melts until like March. That’s the problem.

A few of this paper dolls pieces were Patron pieces last year. Joins us over there for even more fun paper doll content each week.

Retro-Beach Summer Paper Doll with Ruby

One of the interesting things about switching over to Jewels and Gemstones 2.0 has been getting to gather up related pieces from other sets and make them into new sets. I had fun collecting some of the summery clothing I’d drawn over the last year and transforming it into a new set for Ruby, though any of the dolls can wear the clothing. To my patrons, I’m sure these pieces look familiar, but I don’t think most of them have shown up on the blog before.

So, that’s kinda fun.

Paper doll coloring sheet with mix and match wardrobe from paperthinpersonas.com

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I went through several color schemes with this set. Before I finally settled on one that I reminded me of a retro 1960s surf movie poster color scheme. Of course, I didn’t actually look at any retro surf movies for inspiration, but that was my concept. Ruby basically has my hair color here, because I don’t see that color in paper dolls much.

Brunette printable fashion paper doll dress up page with 8 mix and match clothing options.

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In other fun news, I’ve got a published magazine paper doll. If you go grab the current issue of Doll Castle News, you’ll find my paper doll dedicated to “Doll-O-Ween” (shout out to my partner Adam for the title) in there. She was inspired by both BJDs and vintage Ginny dolls. Drawing dolls and not having them come out creepy is super hard. My respect for Diana Vining’s art grew immensely in that project. You can also see some pics on my Instagram.

Anyway, I keep meaning to do a longer post with photos of my sketches and such. However, in case that doesn’t happen (and who knows if it will) I wanted to share.

As always, if you love the blog, want to support it, and want more paper dolls every week- join us on Patreon. This is a one woman show, so any level of support is super helpful to keeping things rolling around here.

The 1980s & Corset Tops: A 2020 Fashion Trend

One of the major trends of 2020 is polka-dots (and I did a paper doll celebrating that already) and then my other trend that I have been super interested in is the 1980s and the tendency as corset tops. Plus, I think when it comes to celebrating fashion, paper dolls are pretty much the perfect fashion paper craft. They allow us to not just explore trends, but kids can draw their own paper doll clothing.

Personally, I don’t really remember the 1980s, because I was both very young and living in Alaska. Alaska is not exactly trendy as a other parts of the country. We’re a little behind in fashion. Also, we all wear lots of rainboots, polar-fleece and puffer vests. Puffer vests might have trended last year, but we were wearing them long before they were trendy.

Anyway, the big trends in this paper doll are the 1980s styles, corsets, bra tops, and Bermuda shorts. The bra tops and corset tops seemed like similar ideas to collapse together. The suit jacket works with either the lose trousers or the skirt, but I colored it as though these were separates for more flexibility. You can, of course, color them any way you choose.

A fun fashion paper craft. A paper doll coloring page with her wardrobe of mix and match separates.

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Color wise, I wanted to use the Pantone 2020 palette called Snorkle. I’m not a huge fan of pantone’s color of the year– Classic Blue. It’s just kind of… boring? Can I admit that. I’m not against it, but it’s not super exciting to me. I guess given how 2020 has gone people are not super into exciting these days. Anyway, there’s also a trend for the return of some neon colors and the bright green was my nod to that trend.

A fun fashion paper craft. A paper doll printable with her wardrobe of mix and match separates.

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Among my favorite things about this version of Pearl is her hair. I’m always working to learn to draw hair better and I feel like this hair came out particularly nice. It’s a process, after all.

Are you into fashion trends? I confess I’m pretty boring in my clothing choices, but I do like drawing them for paper dolls. I try to stay at least aware of what’s happening in the world of trendy clothing.