fashion Archives • Page 4 of 7 • Paper Thin Personas

Summer Garden: A Paper Doll and Her Clothing

May 28, 2020February 8, 2016

I love color. I have teal dining room chairs, after all and a red cabinet in my dining room that holds my larger serving dishes. My favorite sweater is lime green and very fuzzy. I call it the Mountain Dew sweater. The point I am trying to make is that if I have the choice between neutrals and a color- you can pretty much count on me picking out a color. And this helps explain why I decided to go so bright and rich with Marisole’s paper doll clothing.

Someone, I think it was Boots, remarked that she was picturing a lot of yellow and green. Well, she wasn’t wrong… Yellow and Green are definitely here. I wanted color in this paper doll set- the sort of vibrant colors I love in flowers when they are in full bloom. Of course, right now it’s cold and damp here in Alabama, but eventually it won’t be and then the bright colors of spring and summer with come.

And I can complain about the heat on this blog, thereby continuing my theme of never being happy about the weather. (Though I suppose this isn’t true, I do enjoy Spring in Alabama.)

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}

One of my grand frustrations with Marisole’s pose is that you can’t actually layer a long sleeved top under a skirt and expect the skirt to stay on the doll, because of her right arm which is against her stomach. This is one of the annoyances that occurs to me when I am designing mix and match paper doll clothing for her and I want to do things that just won’t work.

I’d scrap the series and redraw, but it is uber hard to give up something that I’ve been doing for six years. There are about 240 Marisole Monday & Friend’s posts on the blog. It is my most popular series and so I feel a little bound to it. It’s also a tiny bit weird to be working on something I drew over six years ago. I remember drawing the first Marisole doll. I was in grad school sitting in the library killing time between class and when I had to go to work.

And now I live in a totally different state and she’s still around. Kinda crazy, honestly.

(Don’t fear, I don’t plan on getting rid of Marisole Monday & Friend‘s anytime soon. Just thoughts about the paper doll series.)

As always, I love hearing comments from readers and, if you want to support the blog, here’s the Patreon page for it.

And Happy New Year to those celebrating the Year of the Monkey!

Summer Garden: A Paper Doll Coloring Page

May 28, 2020February 1, 2016

Normally, I try not to post two fashion paper doll sets in a row, but somehow my life just didn’t let me finish up the other sets I had hoped to have done. Sometime’s life is like that, so for today’s paper doll dress up, you’ll just have to live with another contemporary fashion set.

A lot of these pieces are based on things from fashion magazines.

One of my goals with this set was to use more pattern on each piece. So, I decided to focus on floral patterns. It was fun to create the patterns for these pieces. Of all of the different pieces, my favorite is the drop waisted floral dress. (The polkadot covered jeans are a close second, I confess. They are based on a pair owned by my sister.)

I will openly confess that I really don’t remember everything I was thinking when I designed this set, except that I really wanted to play with pattern. See? Not very set has a deep philosophical story behind it.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}

I’m not sure exactly what season this clothing would really work for. I mean, the turtlenecks are much more autumnal, but the florals are certainly a summer thing. I gave it the title Summer Garden, so I guess it’s summery?

A friendly reminder that if you like the blog and you’d like to support it, I do have a Patreon page where you can donate to keep things around here up and running. It’s also home to the Vivian Project.

I’m also pleased to show off my draft version of my new paper doll index page. It’s still being tweaked, so I’d love to hear what people think of it as well.

Essential Elegance: A Fashion Paper Doll in Color

January 29, 2016January 25, 2016

I’ll be among the first to confess that I am pretty matchy-matchy in my own dressing. I do want my shoes to match my purse and my belt. I realize that’s horribly old fashioned, but I just can’t help it. Unless I’m carrying like teal bag and then I can have on any shoes I want, but if I have a brown bag and black shoes, than I spend the whole day feeling discombobulated. (Dumb, perhaps, but true.) Anyway, I tend towards the same tendencies when designing paper doll clothes.

I think part of it is that the better the colors in the paper doll’s clothes match, than the more outfit options open up. It’s an issue of “playability” in my head. I want every Marisole Monday & Friends set to have a doll and paper doll clothes that could stand alone and be fun by itself. I mean, we all have gotten paper doll sets and cut them all out and then be sad when we realize that really there’s only a few clothing options.

However, I also want every set to be able to share with the other sets. That’s the main reason why, for example, all the Marisole Monday & Friends paper dolls share the same pose. If they can’t share than what’s the point?

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}

When selecting colors for today’s Monica paper doll, I close to go with a lighter brown for her skin, because I liked how it looks with the lime green. The red top and the white dress were the two pieces that inspired the whole set of paper doll clothes, so it wasn’t hard to decide to keep them their base colors. The blue was choosen to tone down the bright red and it’s strong contrast with the bright green.

Personally, my favorite part of the set is how the white and black booties came out, but that’s just me.

As always, I’d love to hear what anyone things in the comments and if you like the blog, support it on Patreon.

A Little Retro Style: Printable Paper Doll

May 26, 2020November 2, 2015

Like any good printable paper doll should, today Marisole is showing off her full color autumn paper wardrobe complete with some sassy boots. The colors I chose are rich jewel tones for these paper doll clothes. I wanted something that said autumn to me and nothing says autumn like jewel tones.

There are color schemes I come back to over and over again in various forms and one of those is teal, dark pink, and green. I just love these colors together. I do confess that I sometimes I tell myself I can’t use “pink” or I must use “green” and that forces me out of color scheme ruts.

I confess this is a color scheme that I have done before, or at least, I feel like I have done it before. Maybe I’m wrong… anyway, it feels awfully familiar to me.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}Every once in a while, I return to things in the deluded belief they are going to come out better. Like red hair and dark skin, I return to it even though I feel that I have yet to actually get it right.

There’s a term for doing the same thing over again expecting different results. They call that, “insanity.”

Anyway, I once again tried red hair and dark skin. I think this attempt was better than several of my other attempts (Mint and Roses, I am looking at you).

There’s a big announcement coming up Wednesday, so stay tuned for that.

A Little Retro Style: Printable Paper Doll Coloring Page

January 31, 2016October 26, 2015

Every once in a while, I imagine totally re-doing this blog. Abandoning my printable paper doll sheet format and switching to an outfit a day or something else totally different.

I doubt I’ll ever have the nerve to do that, but once in a while it does occur to me that it might be interesting to just “start over”. I had no choice back in 2010 when the site crashed, but it was also rather cathartic to be able to think about clean slating things.

(Don’t worry, the site is not destined for radical change at the moment.)

Today’s printable paper doll is Marisole, of the Marisole Monday & Friends Family, showing off her dynamic autumn wardrobe. It has been a while since Marisole has gotten any love which is funny considering she is the oldest of the Marisole Monday & Friends collection.

I love autumn. I love the turning leaves and the crispness in the air and the excuse to wear boots. I also love that the fashion magazines come out in September and provide a wealth of fun and interesting fashions for paper dolls. This is the time of year when I often draw a bunch of fashionable paper doll ladies, but this year I found between moving and a few other things, I just didn’t have the time to devote to my contemporary paper doll drawing habit.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}For this printable paper doll set I actually drew a crop top which I confess I pretty much NEVER do, but I have had requests and I have noticed they are coming back in style. As someone who remembers the 90s, I would rather crop tops not come back. Still, can’t fight the tide forever.

I was going through some of my childhood paper dolls lately and I kept seeing crop tops and miniskirts. I was a little obsessed at age 12, clearly. I’ll have more about childhood paper dolls to share in the beginning of November.

As always, comment if you want and I hope everyone enjoys the paper doll!

Classy Color Blocking: A Printable Paper Doll in Color

January 27, 2016June 1, 2015

Today’s color scheme is based off the Pantone Colors of Spring 2015– though I confess I don’t really like the Pantone colors of Spring 2015. Still, I try to do Pantone paper doll sets, because it gets me out of my comfort zone. Every once in a while, that’s crucially important.

Since the theme of this paper doll set was color blocking, I obviously had no pattern in it. The pieces were based on fashion magazine content that comes out in Spring. While I confess that the color scheme isn’t my favorite, I really like how both pairs of shoes came out and the blue top with the orange and yellow accents. I’d totally wear that top which is not something I can say about most of what I draw for paper dolls.

In the real world, my taste is fairly conservative and leans towards tweed trousers or boho blouses.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}I don’t have much else to say about this paper doll set. She’s named Maeghan which I explained last week and you can see more of her with the rest of the Maeghans in my new, Maeghan category. I’d love to say that new exciting fascinating things will happen on the blog in the coming week, but I am pretty sure it will be pretty much just paper dolls.

And while I like to think paper dolls are new and exciting, its hard to argue that they are also what people come here expecting. Surely no one shows up thinking that this place is going to be full of cat GIFs or delightfully trained mongooses.

For the record, I have no idea what you would train a mongoose to do or even if you can train mongooses.

Country Time: A Plus-Sized Paper Doll in Color or Black and White

December 6, 2020March 25, 2015

The name of this paper doll set is “Country Time” and it might be a reference to the fact that her hair is the same color as Country Time lemonade. I hate coming up with titles and refuse to be shamed over where this one came from.

To be entirely honest, this week has been rough. I had to replace my computer’s RAM which was a good thing, since my computer is faster, but taking it into the shop always makes me nervous. I took my baby (aka MacbookPro) to a locally owned Apple place close to my work and, while I ate lunch at a nearby sandwich shop, they replaced my 4 gigs of RAM with a beautiful shiny new 8 gigs of RAM. It literally took less then 30 minutes and now Photoshop doesn’t hate me anymore.

Seriously, Photoshop is the canary in the coal mine of RAM problems.

So, if you were wondering why there wasn’t a Monday paper doll, the answer is “RAM issues”.

But we’re not hear to talk about my computer woes- We’re here to talk about a fabulous curvy, plus-sized paper doll from the Bodacious & Buxom collection.

Country Time: A black and white printable plu-sized paper doll with a seven piece mix and match wardrobe. Free from paperthinpersonas.com

{Download a PDF of this paper doll to Color} {View a 150 dpi PNG of this Paper Doll to Color}Country Time is part of my B&B series of curvy paper dolls. Her mix and match wardrobe is designed for layering. The leggings are meant to be worn under the skirts or the dress, so there are about 10 outfit options (12 if you consider the leggings wearable without skirts, but I don’t like to wear leggings bare). I was thinking of woods and country and sort of sweet foresty things when I designed these dresses. I also wanted to stick to a pretty constrained wardrobe of neutral colors to play off her pink hair.

Country Time: A pink haired printable plu-sized paper doll with a seven piece mix and match wardrobe. Free from paperthinpersonas.com

{Download a PDF of this paper doll in Full Color} {View a 150 dpi PNG of this Paper Doll in Full Color} {More Bodacious and Buxom Printable Paper Dolls}While pink hair was chosen to counter balance the brown and cream color scheme, I was divided between pink hair and pale blue hair, but in the end I decided I liked how the pink hair looked better. I do have a slight “thing” for pink and blue hair, so I have to fight my natural tendency to prefer those two choices over all other strange hair colors.

I really do hope to have another paper doll up this week, so I can keep up with my two paper dolls a week tendency even though I missed Monday.

Paisely Summer, Printable Black Paper Doll

May 22, 2020June 23, 2014

Sometimes, I struggle to get started on things, especially when I don’t really want to do them. Saturday night came around this week and I really didn’t want to work on this paper doll. I admit it, the orange dress was giving me fits and I was starting to loath my Pantone Spring 2014 Color Report inspired color scheme.

So, I literally set a timer.

Instead of blowing it off, I took out my cellphone and set a timer for 25 minutes. I told myself I would work on today’s Monica paper doll set for 25 minutes and then I would go do something else. Surely, I could suffer through 25 minutes of coloring. Of course, once the 25 minutes was up, I was so far along that I decided I might as well finish.

And here she is, all colored and everything.

I use a timer to do all sorts of things. From cleaning my apartment in fifteen minute bursts to inking for twenty minutes, I find that once I have done something for a short period of time intensely, I often keep going since I’m already in the middle of it. I hate not finishing things, but sometimes I struggle to get started on them.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}As I mentioned before, this set’s color scheme is based on Pantone’s Spring 2014 Color Report and includes several of the Pantone colors. I’m not totally in love with the color choices, but I wanted to stretch myself beyond the colors I tend to naturally gravitate too. Plus, I have done other Pantone inspired color schemes like my Seagulls and Seaside that used the 2013 color report and my Fashion Girl set from 2010 that used the 2009 and 2010 Spring Reports.

Paisley Summer, A Printable Paper Doll

May 22, 2020June 16, 2014

Happy Monday everyone. Today’s paper doll is a beachwear set, which has been a very common request. It is modeled by Monica who I’ve felt is rather neglected over the last while. I try to give all of the Marisole Monday and Friends paper doll styles some love. Monica is the newest member of the family and therefore has the fewest doll sets to her name.

So, today’s paper doll has a fair bit of paisley. I wouldn’t have attempted these patterns until I was comfortable using Photoshop to make complex patterns since redrawing the same paisley shape would have been killer. Instead, I drew one of each design and then placed them using photoshop. Paisley is one of the classic patterns, up there with polkadots and plaids. Paisley originally comes out of Persia, but it’s been being used around Europe as well for centuries.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}

I have to confess that while I am happy at how the patterned pieces in this set came out, I am not looking forward to the complexity of coloring those detailed patterns. I wanted the pants to be like the loose patterned pants which seem to be popular this season, but I rather think they came out just looking fairly clownish.

Never the less, it’s not uncommon for me to dislike one or two pieces of any paper doll set. I guess if I have to dislike one piece than this isn’t such a bad piece to dislike. Also, I didn’t give her any heels which is very odd for me. I rather like heels, but I suppose even paper dolls need to be comfortable sometimes.

Lastly, the current contest/drawing for a custom paper doll is open until Midnight Central Time on the 18th. Enter if you like.

Sporty Pixie named Adannaya

May 22, 2020April 23, 2014

Like Jaunty Summer Styles and Minimalism, today’s printable paper doll was the direct result of me purchasing a bunch of fashion magazines in March. Adannaya is rocking the “sporty” look which is very popular. Sort of high fashion meets gym wear and if that seems like an odd match to you then you are not alone (it seems an odd match to me too). Her hair is based on this fantastic updo which I pinned to my hair board on Pinterest. Lurking around my Pinterest boards provides sneak peaks on what I am currently obsessed with. Feel free to follow me.

{Download a PDF to Print and Color} {Download a PNG to Print and Color}

Anyway, the name Adannaya is from West Africa, Igbo to be specific, and means “Her Father’s daughter” according to Behind the Name. I’m sure I’ve never used the name before. I liked that I could track it to a specific culture. I think calling a name “African” is just as absurd as calling a name “European”. There are about a hundred major African languages, so I wasn’t going to use a name if I couldn’t trace it back to the root language. For Adannaya the root language is is Igbo, mostly spoken in southeastern Nigeria. Someone who knows more than me about the region would know if it was a common name or not, I have no idea, but I liked how it sounded.

{Download a PDF to Print in Color} {Download a PNG to Print in Color} {Click Here for More Pixie and Puck Printable Paper Dolls}

Anyhow, I’m traveling today, so I’ve pre-scheduled this to rule in my absence. I’ve nearly worked my way through my backlog that I spent so much of February and March building. I suppose this means I’ll be drawing a fair bit over the next few weeks trying to get caught up again. What I really need is another snow closing… but I doubt that’s going to happen. 🙂

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