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.
Continuing the contemporary theme from Monday’s paper doll, today’s paper doll set is Sylvia showing off her wardrobe. I previewed the paper doll a few weeks ago when I showed the scan straight from my sketchbook. Today, she’s all colored and ready to be printed.
As I always do, there’s two versions of this printable paper doll and her clothes. One is in black and white for coloring and the other is in color for those who don’t like to color. I was never a big “coloring” kid, so I tend towards the full color versions, but I know some of my readers really like the black and white paper doll sets. Mostly, I remember drawing my own paper doll clothes for store bought paper dolls. That was a big part of my childhood.
Contemporary paper doll sets, like this one, really don’t come with stories. The goal is to create a coherent collection of mix and match clothing pieces. I rarely think much about the history or personality of the paper doll wearing the clothing. Fantasy sets tend to gain back-stories during creation, but contemporary sets rarely do. Fantasy paper dolls require more creativity. I can’t just copy out of a magazine, after all.
Sylvia’s color scheme is very pink. I wasn’t planning on making it this pink when I started, but somehow pink seemed to fit. I think there’s a little bit of a vintage vibe to this set that I didn’t intend, but ended up pretty cute in the end.
All right, just because I am curious… 5 second poll…
Petal is one of my new Poppet paper dolls. She’s got braids decorated with beads. When I lived in Illinois, the grocery store I usually shopped at was right next to a braiding place. The little girls coming out with their hair all braided and decorated with different colored beads were so cute. I chose white beads for Petal, since I thought those beads would match nearly anything.
Along with her braids, Petal has underwear, a skirt, a shirt and some shorts. I tried to base these clothes of things I’ve seen on the market for actual children. Since I don’t have kids of my own, I collect images of kids clothes on my Pinterest boards. Then I adapt them into paper dolls. I figure most people collect images for adapting into paper dolls. My image collections offer hints of things to come, though I have been known to keep projects on secret boards when I’m not sure I want them for public consumption.
Meanwhile, I am working on polishing up my Search Engine Optimization. I don’t know much about this topic, but I have been trying to write better titles for my posts. Paper Thin Personas remains on the second page of Google search results for Printable Paper Dolls, a fact that I find increasingly frustrating. Oh well… I can’t win them all.
Also, in the realm of blog paper work, the Email Notification thingy on the sidebar should be back up and working. If you already signed up for email notifications when the site updates, you should be receiving them. If you’re not into email options, feel free to follow me on Twitter. I announce post updates there as well.
By the way, Happy Thanksgiving to anyone whose celebrating. I’ll be making pie today and getting green beans prepped.
I play Pathfinder, a Dungeons and Dragons like game, most Friday nights with a group of friends at a local game shop. Generally, I have to know what my character is wearing before I can actually play the character.
Weird, but true.
Clothing is a direct expression of how my character thinks and functions in the world. Some people think about their characters in terms of unique weapons or speech patterns, I think about my characters in terms of what sort of shoes they would choose while trekking through a ruin.
Years ago, I discovered the work of Sheryl A Knowles who drew paper dolls of her RPG characters. Just by looking at the outfits of the paper dolls, I knew the sorts of characters she was creating.
I rarely draw my own characters (here’s an exception), but when I work on a paper doll set, I want to convey the world and personality through the paper doll outfits.
Marcus here is a mechanic. So, his clothing is utilitarian. The double breasted vest is in his “good” clothes, with a belt for his money pouch and a decorative pointless armband. His tie is loose. His other brown vest is more of a work outfit. He wears vests to keep grease off his shirts. With this outfit, his tie is tucked up, so that it doesn’t get caught in machines. He’s on his feet a lot, so he has two pairs of boots. The cap keeps his dreads from getting in the way while he’s working (because hair in engines = pain) and his leather satchel is where he stores his tools. Work gloves, a scarf for cold weather and some tools complete the set.
You can also tell a little about Marcus’ personality here. His dreads are decorated with beads and I know from people who have them that dreads take some maintenance. Clearly, he’s someone who cares about how he looks. Is he perhaps somewhat of a ladies man?
Paper doll sets can be tiny windows into lives and worlds. That’s part of the fun.
I was inspired by the colors of red and pink snapdragons when I decided on the color scheme for this paper doll set. I ended up relying more on the greens than on the pinks, but I do love the colors of a garden in bloom. I used this stuttershock photo as my color inspiration.
I have sick for the last few days and will be sick for a few more. I’m not in danger, just groggy and easily tired. I fortunately had this paper doll done already or there wouldn’t have been a monday update. What I hate about being sick is that things which aren’t normally exhausting become entirely exhausting.
Going to the grocery store yesterday was an act of heroic difficulty, but I managed and I’m glad I did it. I was getting very stir crazy. (No worries about infecting my fellow shoppers. I’m not contagious.)
I hope everyone enjoys today’s paper doll. I hope to have another Marcus set done for next Monday and then I’ll see where we are with things. I promised someone a majorette paper doll and I want to do my 8 days of paper dolls for Hanukkah, so I need to start building up the backlog for that.
Maristela is a Spanish/Portuguese name coming from the title of the Virgin Mary, Stella Maris, meaning “star of the sea” in Latin. I thought it was such a pretty name that I had to use it, though I don’t know if there is anything “star” or “sea” like about today’s paper doll set.
I wanted to draw a “traditional” princess- sort of the Disney variety with two simple fantasy gowns. I wanted the paper doll to be pretty- pretty is not something I normally try to achieve, but that was what I wanted to get out of today’s paper doll set.
Maristela has two gowns and two pairs of shoes, giving her a total of four different outfit combinations. Her hair is long and wavy. I had fun drawing her harp, a rather unusual accessory for me to draw. I was going to draw a flute, but I was not successful.
I decided against drawing her a crown. I think my crowns usually come out poorly.
Intitally, I was going to go with pink as my color of choice for this monochrome color scheme. Really embrace the idea of “girly” paper doll sets. Instead, I decided to go with purple. It’s fairly girly, but it’s also not too girly.
In my mind, Maristela is latina, but there’s no reason she has to be.
Also, I’d like to say that I have been overwhelmed and very grateful to the wonderful responses to Marcus 2.0.
This project has been a long time in incubation. I drew my last Marcus 1.0 paper doll in July of 2013. He never looked right to me and he was out of proportion to the smaller more delicate Marisole, Mia, Margot, and Monica.
In the end, I took K’s and Julie’s advice and resized him in photoshop. He got skinnier and shorter. His head got smaller. I printed out the heavily altered version and sketched it up on lined paper as I do when I am testing a paper doll template. I altered it some more. I redrew the face about nine times.
And I’d given up on redoing Marcus 1.0 until I got some really nice comments from my readers asking when I was going to post another Marcus paper doll.
Well… no. He’s got pretty defined hips for a man and he does look a bit girly. Still, I’m more pleased with him than I ever imagined I could be with a male paper doll.
In celebration of his debut, I decided to post both the black and white and the color versions this Monday. I am very proud of how he came out.
I don’t have anything Halloween organized for Halloween this year. I am trying to get something done in time for Friday, but I wouldn’t hold my breath anyone. Instead, I offer a rare male paper doll to grace the collection of Marisole Monday & Friends.
I have big plans for Marcus. I’ve already drawn a fantasy set for him and I’m working on a steampunk airship mechanic set. I’m actually having more fun with my male paper doll than I ever thought I would.
The fascinating thing about paper dolls (or perhaps one fascinating thing) is how the medium of “paper” can effect the actual playability of a paper doll set. You can fold paper, so tabs are used to hold on pieces. Paper is easily cut to make slits for hats.
Magnetic paper dolls require a different thought process. Hats can not be tucked behind the doll, for example. There are no tabs and collars can not “wrap around” the back of the doll’s neck. Everything has to stack neatly on top of each other.
Sometimes people ask me if I would make the Flock a “paper” paper doll series, rather than a magnetic paper doll series. The answer is no. Flock was conceived to be made of magnet and their outfits just wouldn’t all work as paper set.
Today’s magnetic set features a dabble into Noir Punk by Pheobe, one of my other Flock magnetic paper dolls.
I had a very good childhood friend named Phoebe and it’s after her that I named this paper doll (though I have to confess the paper doll looks NOTHING like Phoebe.) I love the blue hair against the light brown skin tone and I really want her hats. Hats make everything better. I wish we still wore hats, except I look terrible in hats.
All the pieces on this wardrobe page and intended to be mixed and matched with all the pieces on Wren’s Noir Punk pages. I don’t think I did as good of a job on this set as I did on my Starling Punk Noir set. I have to give that some thought. In the meantime, enjoy the magnetic paper dolls. 🙂
Also, if you need instructions on how to make magnetic paper dolls, I explain too methods in my Magnetic Paper Dolls Tutorial.
Among other things I did last night, I took the time to tabulate the number of pages of paper doll content on the blog and update my sidebar. I’m up to 527 pages of printable paper dolls, including my magnetic paper dolls and my random stand alone paper dolls. Yay!
So far this year, I’ve posted 44 different Marisole Monday & Friends sets. For anyone interested, that’s 19 sets in color and 25 sets in black and white. Today’s set in color is totally a favorite. I love her braids, the color scheme and how her bow came out.
So, when I finished a bunch of Marisole Monday & Friends paper dolls, I was initially totally proud of myself. Now, it’s several weeks later and I truly couldn’t tell you what I had planned on saying about this paper doll set when it really comes down to it.
I suppose I could say something about how the colors are based on the sunset or about how important I think it is to have fantasy characters with brown skin, but really I don’t know that I haven’t already said all of that before.
I could also express my shock when I once asked a student what she was doing over the weekend and she told me going to the salon to get micro-braids put in.
And I said, “But that won’t take your whole Saturday.”
And she said, “Yeah it will. About six hours.”
And I was stunned into silence.
So, let us hope that the elves have magic or something to speed that process along. If I had magical powers, I would totally use them to make sure I never had a bad hair day and also do my dishes. If you had magical powers, what would you use them for?
Back in the early days of the interweb when I built my first, and perhaps best forgotten, paper doll site, images were generally small. They look a long time to load and things like Pinterest didn’t exist- neither did really any Social Media.
In those days images were best kept small, but today we can get away with much larger images and I like large images. They are pretty. One of the things I have been doing is working on reformating a lot of the images on the blog to be larger and easier to see.
This is a very long way of saying that today’s Flock magnetic paper doll post is in a different format then my other Flock posts. Let me know what you think in a comment…
Meanwhile, I am dabbling again with Noir Punk, or as I think most know it, Diesel Punk. Personally, I like my name better. Basically, it’s vintage styled clothing of the 1930s and 1940s combined with a punk aesthetic.
I do not offer a link to the PNG to print for my magnetic paper dolls, because you shouldn’t print them from the PNG. The PDF allows the image to be properly sized to the page and therefore to the dolls.
Anyway, here is Wren, named for a bird, showing off her shoes and hats. I really do like the hats and I think they are fun for the Flock magnetic paper dolls. Magnetic paper dolls are fun.
Wren is here with some retro clothes and corsets, because that’s what everyone needs. I love the boots, personally. Next week, there will be another set of these with Wren showing off page two of these outfits.
I’ve dabbled in this style before and you can see that Starling set of Punk Noir if you like. I’m not sure how I feel about the colors on this set, but for the moment, I like them.
Last week, as you may recall, I posted my Court Alchemist paper doll. This week I am posting three more printable paper doll dresses and two pairs of shoes which gives her five outfits in total. I really do think the clothing makes the paper doll. I was always that kid who would have rather have had dozens of outfits over dozens of paper dolls.
In fact, I remember when American Girl magazine published paper dolls and I used to get so annoyed that the dolls were “almost” in the exact same pose, but not quite. So, they couldn’t perfectly share clothing. Drove me just nuts as a kid. Here is a picture of one of the paper dolls.
Are there any children’s magazines left that still publish paper dolls?
I recall with much fondness the feeling to getting to check the mail for my American Girl magazine and it’s promised paper doll. In fact, if you want a similar experience (and you have an HP web enabled printer), then you might consider my HP Paper Thin Personas Printer Ap which prints a full color or black and white paper doll every Monday, automatically. You can also print the paper dolls on demand directly from the printer which is, I have to confess, pretty neat.
So, there are three dresses in this set. In my head, these are all fairly informal dresses. And who doesn’t need socks held up by some odd sock suspenders? (There is something inherently hilarious to me about sock suspenders… I might have a problem.)
I went back and forth about the patterned dress. I wanted it to look like a pattern that could be woven on a simple loom, but it ended up looking sort of like abstract eyes and now all I can think is, “The dress is staring at me…”
As for tools, along with last week’s tool collection, this set adds a sextant, which is a tool for measuring the angle between any two visible objects, most often the horizon and stars. It was crucial for navigating back in the days before high levels of technology. As a girl with NO sense of direction, I am totally grateful to whoever invented GPS. If I had to navigate via sextant, I think I would end up lost way more often than I already am.
So, Friday there will be another page of Her Ladyship and Monday there will be an elf.
Meanwhile, you can follow me on twitter @paperpersonas for blog updates, random paper doll thoughts, and a smattering of librarianship.
So, with last week’s paper doll I spoke a little about why I decided to dabble in the Southwest trend this season and today I wanted to show off the colors I used for the paper doll set. I knew from the start that I was going to be using a desert inspired color scheme. It is the Southwest, after all.
As a child, we visited the Grand Canyon. I will always think of reds, browns, ochre and sandy khaki when I think of that landscape. I confess to not being much of a desert person by nature; however, I do think they can be astonishingly beautiful.
I did not want to fall into the trap of just using a monochromatic warm color scheme though, so I also decided to include a pale turquoise, a very pale bayleaf green and a darker green for contrast. Normally I try to keep my color schemes to five colors, but this set needed a lot more. (I blame it on that patterned pencil skirt.)
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