Last year, I took on a slightly wild project: drawing 100 days of paper dolls. And part of that was drawing a dress and suit for each of the 12 months, focusing on flowers of the month. This is February’s version celebrating the violet.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the violet is one of February’s birth flowers (along with the primrose, but the violet won my heart). In the Victorian language of flowers (floriography, as it is known) violets symbolized modesty, faithfulness, and devotion. They’re small, low-growing flowers, the kind you have to bend down to notice. I like that for February. It’s a month that often feels hushed.
My grandmother grew African violets competitively, but these are wild violets.
This post continues the Cutie Series, my ongoing paper doll project designed to be easy to color (especially for kids), with simple lines and open spaces. This year (2026!), I’m sharing the flower-inspired designs here on the blog one month at a time.
As I said, this project began as a 100-day challenge on Patreon in 2025, and Patreon is still a place where I tested ideas. In fact, I am currently doing a different 100-day challenge involving sewing patterns! It’s been super fun and I’ll be sharing it over on Patreon.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Valentine’s Day paper dolls and I have a long history together. So, if this printable Valentine paper doll one doesn’t bring you joy well.. I have quite a few others. I’m sure there’s something there you’ll enjoy.
When I was little, my grandmother would mail my sister and me Valentine’s cards which were often paper dolls. You can’t really find greeting card paper dolls anymore (a fact that makes me very sad, but, oh well…) When I was a kid, each one felt like a small treasure. So now, most years, I draw a Valentine’s Day paper doll in her honor. I try to remember to pop something in the mail for my niece and nephew each year, because of how much I enjoyed getting those cards.
A few notes: I decided on a pink and teal color scheme for this year’s printable Valentine paper doll, which is pretty common for me. I really like teal and pink (two of my favorite colors) and so I wanted to see them together. I went more teal than pink with this time. Not for any real reason, it just sort of happened. The puff sleeved bodice can go over the gown with open shoulders and a heart shape on the bodice. Also, in my head, that gown is the evening dress and the other gown is a day dress. Or maybe one is a summer dress and the other a winter dress, since the longer sleeves are warmer.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Valentine’s Day today. And if not wonderful, may it at least pass without incident and deliver you into tomorrow’s promised land of half-price chocolate and discounted roses. Truly, February 15th is the unsung hero of the season. (If you’re a rose enthusiast, this is your moment.) I’ll confess, though: my heart belongs to peonies. But love is personal, so choose your own floral adventure.
To be 100% honest, I don’t have that much exposure to children.
It’s not intentional, but I don’t have kids and most of my friends also don’t have kids. However, I have a delightful niece and a wonderful nephew. Both of them love to color and I have spent many a family gathering coloring with them. One thing became extremely clear to me in 2024: many of my paper doll printables are… a lot. Like, ambitious. Possibly designed for people with the fine motor control of a watchmaker.
My niece explained this to me very politely as, “Some kids might have some trouble with some of them,” which I’m fairly certain translates to: This is unhinged, Aunt Rachel.
Friends, she was correct.
So I set to work designing a genuinely kid-friendly paper doll series.
My requirements:
Tabs big enough that little fingers can actually cut them out without losing their minds.
Linework simple and generous, with plenty of room for crayons, markers, or just joyful scribbles. I test colored several sets with crayons just to make sure I could and sized the dolls generously for crayon usage. (People can have preferences, but I love a crayon. Super fun way to color.)
Bodies designed to wear any outfits. That way you can mix, match, swap, repeat. Listen, if you want to dress up the same doll in a ballgown and a suit of armor, that should be 100% possible. The joy of paper dolls is their versatility and I am not about to dictate how children should play.
Years ago, I got a letter once from a reader saying their four year old son really wanted guy paper dolls with ballgowns and while I didn’t have any guy paper dolls at the time, I often think of that letter. That child is now probably in college (It’s been a very long time), but better late than never. Now, guy paper dolls can 100% have ballgowns that fit them properly.
Lastly, I wanted faces friendly and simple… absolutely not the kind that stare into your soul. Promise. Though I was warned by my friend that they might edge a little into terrifying, if I wasn’t careful.
So, here we are.
I’m planning to name each batch of dolls alphabetically, so here are some A dolls. Yes, I was looking for gender neutral names. Yes, Ariel was a guys name until Disney came along. Go read The Tempest. I digress.
For this fantasy 18th-century inspired paper doll download, I’ve been dipping my toes into 18th-century fashion, drawing inspiration from structured stays, flowing overskirts, folkloric motifs, and romance of gardening. I really wanted to include a watering can. Little details like that help ground the fantasy and give the paper doll a sense of theme with her seed packets and her gardening journal. As a child, I had a Madame Alexander 2002 catalog and I remember falling in love with the Cissy Pompadour doll and well, my love of roccoco 18th century gardening was born.
When I first sketched this idea, it was the height of summer. Now it’s –30 outside and any real-world gardening is firmly on hold, but this little historical fantasy exists in its own warm season, blissfully unaware of the cold.
After finishing all the inking, I dove into the coloring phase, which turned out to be both a challenge and a delight. I spent some time wrestling with the palette, At first, some of the base tones felt out of sync, making the overall look a bit clashy rather than cohesive.
What finally unlocked it was a simple but reliable trick: laying down a very nearly transparent wash, just a hint of grey, brown, or blue, over the whole piece. That helps pull disparate colors into the same tonal family, softening harsh contrasts and giving everything a shared atmosphere. It’s an old trick and it works well.
One of my favorite details to work on was the paper doll’s absurd 18th-century inspired hair, which became especially satisfying to refine once the colors were working together instead of fighting each other. Her hair color changed about six times, but in the end I though a soft honey blond was a contrast to the very bright color scheme.
If you enjoy printable paper dolls inspired by historical fashion and garden fantasy, you may also like exploring my other 18th-century inspired paper doll download options, including designs that focus on period underpinnings, layered dresses, and seasonal themes. I love revisiting historical silhouettes through fantasy designs inspired by the era, but I’ve also done some historical 18th century sets as well. Please don’t ask me to pick a favorite, I know I couldn’t.
I shared some of the messy middle stages of this printable paper doll over on Patreon for my Patrons, including sketches, color experiments, and behind-the-scenes process images. If you enjoy seeing how these historical fantasy paper dolls come together, you can check that out here. One of my goals for 2026 is to share more of my WIP for my Patrons.
Last year, I took on a slightly wild project: drawing 100 days of paper dolls. Once I started drawing 100 outfits for paper dolls, I needed ideas. So, I drew outfits inspired by birth month flowers, since it seemed like a fun thing to do.
This post kicks off the Cutie Series, an ongoing paper doll project with several different sets planned over time. The Cuties are designed to be easy to color (especially for kids). I’ll say more about that approach in a future post.
This year (2026!), I’ll be sharing the flower-inspired designs here on the blog one month at a time, starting in January with the carnation. So, if you need January coloring activities for kids, these two pages hopefully will be some fun.
According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the Carnation is the birth flower of the month for January. In the Victorian language of flowers (floriography, if we’re being formal), carnations symbolized fascination, though color mattered: yellow meant disdain, red meant passionate love, and so on. Carnations are also the state flower of Ohio, a random fact I stumbled across in my carnation research.
January’s bird of the month is the owl, which is why it appears in the second outfit. I originally planned to use birds of the month throughout this subseries, but birds, it turns out, refuse to be neatly categorized. There are so many different lists of them. I quickly gave up. Still, an owl, long associated with Athena and therefore wisdom, feels like a good way to start the year.
This project began as a 100-day challenge on Patreon in 2025, and Patreon is still where I test ideas, share early drafts, and quietly see what works for me. If that part of the creative process appeals to you, you’re very welcome to join me there. It’s a nice little community.
Meet a diminutive paper doll with fantasy dresses, poised for adventure, literary excursions, and the occasional (but undeniably dramatic) sword duel. In truth, any visit to the library carries a nontrivial risk of armed theatrics with sword, or at least it should. You may take my word for it. I am, after all, a librarian.
This particular paper doll with fantasy dresses was inspired by two outfits I sketched many years ago for an entirely different doll. When my imagination feels sluggish, I like to rummage through my old work and borrow from my past self. It’s a bit like time travel, only with (hopefully) better line work. Anyway, this is one of the dresses and this is the other dress.
Her overall mood carries a whisper of The Lord of the Rings, mixed with a dash of Victorian-era medieval romance. You know, the sort of world where everyone looks fancy and has surprisingly straight teeth and no one leaves the castle without a sword or a book. Whenever I get stuck designing fantasy accessories, I default to “books and swords,” which feels deeply on-brand. Someday I may diversify my repertoire to include goblets or apothecary vessels of dubious origin, but today is not that day.
May her paper skirts swish gracefully across your imagination.
If you enjoy these little paper worlds and want to support the drawings behind them, you’re always welcome on my Patreon, where I share behind-the-scenes sketches, extra paper doll downloads, and the occasional overly enthusiastic ramble about various creative things.
Today’s costume for Bianca Boo’s Frightful Frocks is a Halloween ghost outfit! It’s inspired by 18th-century rococo style and my love of deconstructed hoop skirts (even if it’s not exactly historically accurate). I made two versions. There’s one with blood splatter and one without. The splatter version was really just an excuse to finally use my ink splatter brushes in Procreate, and honestly, I love it. But I also know not everyone wants to hand their kiddo a blood-splattered dress, so there’s a “cute” version for those who prefer their Halloween less creepy.
Speaking of ghosts: Occasionally, I think this blog might be haunted. My server’s been acting up for days. It’s nothing major, just those annoying little downtimes that fix themselves if I wait long enough.
Anyway, here’s a poem, as usual for my Halloween ghost paper doll, two versions for the two dresses:
Beneath the moon’s silver light, Bianca Boo floats out tonight, Her tears fall where love has bled, A bloody ghost among the dead.
—or—
Beneath the moon’s silver light, Bianca Boo floats out tonight, Her tears fall where love has bled, A silent ghost among the dead.
The idea behind this one was more costume than literal ghost. Transparent people just aren’t that exciting to draw. I’m usually a “creepy but not gory” Halloween person, so the blood surprised even me, but once I did it, I thought, “Huh, maybe I should splatter more things with blood.”
When Julie and I started this project, she suggested reasonable black and white designs, and I was like, “Nope! Full color, patterns, shadows. The works!”
(She was right, by the way. This was way more work than I anticipated when I schemed it up.)
At the time, I wanted to push myself creatively, focus on painting, and not worry about the usual mix-and-match practicality. Normally, I design paper dolls that can swap clothes endlessly (because representation and flexibility matter!), but for this project, it was just seven dresses, one doll. Totally manageable—and honestly, a breath of fresh air. I don’t regret the decision to go full color and try my hand at digital painting, but I admit I might not be doing it again for a while.
Paper dolls have always felt a little like theater to me. Change the costume, change the character. Funny story: when I named Paper Thin Personas, I discovered that the “correct” plural of persona is personae, but in theater, cast lists are often titled Personas. I loved that. So, each paper doll is a performer, and every outfit is a new role to play. Super fun! And in this case, the transformation is into a Halloween ghost!
If you’re enjoying Bianca Boo’s Frightful Frocks, consider supporting me on Patreon and leave a comment. The full set will be available to download soon. I need to catch my breath.
Today’s theme for Bianca Boo’s Frightful Frocks is Pumpkins!
This paper doll outfit was another case where I designed the hair before I designed the outfit. (Just like I did with the Bat design) I feel like I must have seen this somewhere. I don’t imagine I came up with entirely on my own, but I have a sort of “no research” rule when I do Halloween things. So, I don’t know where it came from even though I imagine it came from somewhere.
For the outfit, I was inspired in part by a these pumpkin designs from (I think) Nyahallo. The designs aren’t signed, which is hard. I love pumpkins. Not only do I love to eat them (I do love that), but I love the shapes and colors of them. They’re so sculptural. I wanted to bring this love of the shape of pumpkins to the outfit.
I wish I had not used the word “rows” twice in the poem. I was writing fast, because I was behind. “Oh, well, perhaps something I’ll fix someday in revision.” (I say this knowing I will never do that.)
Bianca Boo with laughter sweet, Steps through rows of pumpkins neat, Orange globes in cheerful rows, Her Halloween magic clearly shows!
I think this one really captures what I love about Halloween paper doll design. Those little intersections of whimsy, nostalgia, and seasonal color. Pumpkins have such a joyful presence, and translating that into a costume was just plain fun.
As always, I hope you enjoy dressing up your dolls in these frightful frocks and maybe feel a little pumpkin magic of your own this spooky season.
Today’s Halloween paper doll dress theme is “Fortune Teller.” I don’t have a lot to say about this one. I really struggled to come up with an idea. I think this ended up somewhere between a mystical wanderer, pirate, and a free-spirited artist. I spent quite a while experimenting before finally finding a direction that felt right. I decided to center the look around a dress decorated with classic Rider–Waite tarot card designs. These cards were first published in December 1909 by William Rider & Son of London. Because the original cards were printed cheaply, the color palette was quite limited. I don’t know tarot, so the one I chose mostly had to do with what I thought I could draw and simpify and would still be clearly cards. If you know how to read these cards, let me know!
It’s deeply hilarious to me how close Julie’s design and my design are. We do not consult when we do these! I had no idea what she was planning.
Today’s little poem:
Bianca Boo with a knowing grin, Foretells where your fate will begin. As cards reveal their mystic hue, Dark whispers tell what waits for you
As in many Octobers past, I’m teaming up with Julie Matthews from Paper Doll School for this fun joint paper doll project between our two sites: Paper Thin Personas (mine) and Paper Doll School (hers). This year, though, things are a little more hectic than usual. I usually like to have everything finished a few days ahead, but right now I’m definitely scrambling. Still, we’re determined to make it happen and with a bit of luck (and plenty of caffeine), the spooky magic will come together once again.
If you enjoyed today’s design, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments! You can also check out Julie’s latest Frightful Frock over on her site, or join me on Patreon to help keep the paper dolls coming (and get a few fun extras along the way).
Today’s Frightful Frock for Bianca Boo is a bat-themed dress in lilac and black. It is probably the darkest of all the dresses I designed for this series. From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to give her a bat hair clip, and the rest of the look grew from there. I don’t usually start with a hair idea, but in this case, that was how my brain worked.
This was actually the first dress I designed, and its over-skirt (meant to resemble bat wings) made it tricky to come up with a unique idea for the Moth Queen gown later on. My early drafts for that one looked way too much like this bat-themed dress! That’s part of why I leaned into the Qi Lolita style for the Moth Queen from yesterday’s post. Of course, I didn’t work in order, because I am not that organized.
There’s a subtle pattern on this dress, though I wish I’d pushed the contrast a bit more. That is something I’m still learning to balance in digital art. One of my “rules” for this was that I was designing things that were inspired by their themes, rather than literal costumes for those things; however, I didn’t 100% follow that, as you shall see later on.
Here’s her poem:
Bianca Boo with lilac hair, Found a bat swooping through the air, They spiraled past the haunted trees, Two happy friends on a ghostly breeze.
For the poetry fans out there: each of these poems is a quatrain, a four-line stanza. This one uses an AA/BB rhyme scheme, meaning lines one and two rhyme, and lines three and four rhyme. This is a very common poetic form. I had planned to write limericks, but limericks are actually a really complicated form to work in.
And can we talk about Julie’s bat corset? It’s an absolute delight. I wish I’d thought of it first! She also has a procreate “bat brush” available for folks over on Paper Doll School. So much fun.
The epic of Halloween’s paper doll dresses continues!
Today’s Fright Frock for Bianca Boo, my Halloween printable paper doll project with Julie Matthews, is a “Moth Queen” themed gown. So, of course, I needed a dress and a crown and a wig, because Bianca’s hair has to match the rest of her style. When Julie and I first brainstormed this Halloween paper doll project, we started with a list of thirteen ideas and narrowed it down to our favorites. Today’s design, The Moth Queen, isn’t a costume exactly, it is more of an “inspired by” outfit. I admit that I first thought of a more “fairy” feeling sort of dress, but that felt cliche, so I turned to other ideas.
Lolita fashion has always fascinated me. Originating from Japanese street fashion, Lolita draws inspiration from Victorian and Rococo clothing, creating that signature modest, doll-like silhouette full of lace, bows, and ruffles. What I find endlessly inspiring about the style is that outfits are organized into coordinates around themes, so everything matches from the purse to the dress. I think that’s very rich fodder for paper dolls, myself. For today’s Moth Queen themed paper doll outfit, I was inspired by Qi Lolita fashion, a substyle that mixes the frilly sweetness of Lolita with traditional Chinese clothing details.
Moths seem to be having a real moment right now. I’m not sure why, but then again, I rarely understand fashion trends, and that’s never stopped me from drawing them anyway. Personally, I like to think of moths as butterflies for autumn. They are a little moodier and perfect for spooky season (which is apparently what the internet is calling ‘fall’ these days).
As with the rest of Bianca Boo’s Frightful Frocks, I’ve been pairing each outfit with a short, whimsical poem. I don’t usually write formal verse, but I’ve been having so much fun experimenting with these little rhymes. Here’s the poem for today’s dress:
Bianco Boo in a frock so bright, Dancing and twirling through the night, With wings unfurled in golden gloss, She crowned herself the queen of moths.
If you’d like to add The Moth Queen to your collection, you can download the printable paper doll outfit above. And if you missed the earlier designs in this Halloween series, be sure to check out the rest of Bianca Boo’s Frightful Frocks. Each one comes with its own little verse to celebrate the spooky season. Also, be sure to check out Julie Matthew’s Paper Doll School where she’s also creating outfits for these themes.
Today’s Halloween paper doll dress theme is “Vampire Aristocrat.”
You might wonder, what exactly makes a vampire an aristocrat?
If we’re being literary about it, Dracula can be read as an exploration of how the powerful exploit the powerless: noble men with titles preying on young women without them, a subtle class critique of late Victorian England.
Every so often, I find myself feeling lucky to have a friend like Julie. She’s someone I can text and say, “Look at the reflection I did on the gems! I’m so proud,” and she completely understands. She also understands digital art far better than I do, which is another blessing. It’s invaluable to have creative friends who are more skilled in areas you want to grow in. Very handy.
Julie mentioned she’s challenging herself to use as little black as possible in the Frightful Frock Halloween project we’re both doing. I really admire that kind of artistic restraint. I didn’t set out with the same rule, but now that I think about it, there isn’t much black in my own designs either. Not intentionally; it just didn’t happen. Art is like that.
Here’s the poem that goes with my Vampire Aristocrat dress:
Bianca Boo, her fangs so bright Glides through shadows, pale as light. With velvet grace and eyes that gleam, Her fancy frock a monster’s dream.
I tried to work the word vampire into the poem, but it’s not the easiest term to rhyme elegantly. It’s also three syllables which makes meter a little rough with it. I could go on… I admit formal verse isn’t really my thing, but I love nonsense verse and light verse.
I wasn’t sure this dress really said “vampire” after I finished it. For testing purposes, I turned to my ever-patient husband. I showed him the design and asked, “Okay, what’s the theme?” He looked at it for a moment and said, “Vampire?” Success! The message came through.
That’s exactly what I was hoping for: something elegant and just a little eerie, leaning fully into the creepy-cute aesthetic that makes Halloween design so much fun.
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