Marisole Monday & Friends

Fabulous Fairy Paper Doll Coloring Page

fairy-black-white-logoIt used to be that when I didn’t know what to name a printable paper doll set, I would fall back on using colors as name inspiration. This doesn’t work when the paper doll page doesn’t have any color.

In short, this is how I ended up entitling today’s set “Fabulous Fairy” which is a pretty dumb name.

Anyway, it might not be my most inspired paper doll naming moment, but I do really like the set. It’s also one of the sets that I consider being an “other friend” set to the Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper dolls. I wanted to give her a more angular face and so I altered the jaw to be narrow and sharp and her nose a bit, as well as her lips. I wanted her to seem more angular and more alien.

A fairy paper doll coloring page with a doll and four dresses. She also has wings and shoes. From paperthinpersonas.com.
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I drew this set at the same time as when I drew my Monica elven set. I’ve done another fairy set of Mia as a fairy. I don’t think these two fairies associate much. I think this fairy was much more elegant than the my Mia fairy. Just like with that paper doll, the wings can be pasted to the back of the doll using the white strip in the middle. As long as you just glue down the white strip, all the clothes tabs should still work.

At least, I hope they do, though I confess I have not tested them.

Happy Monday and enjoy the fairy paper doll. 🙂 She’ll be in color next week.

A New Paper Doll Man for Marisole Monday & Friends

marcus-logoThis 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.

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Is he perfect?

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.

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So, this is Marcus 2.0.

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.

Thoughts on other male paper doll ideas?

Elven Fantasy Printable Paper Doll with a Sunset Inspired Color Scheme

monica-elf-color-logoAmong 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.

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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?

Monica as a Elvish Fantasy Paper Doll to Print and Color

monica-elf-bw-logoMonica is the newest member of the Marisole Monday & Friends family and she hasn’t gotten to have as many adventures as some of her paper doll friends.

Mia has gotten to be a princess and a fairy and a goth. Margot has been a Victorian ballerina, a marauder and gone to Wonderland. Marisole has had the most adventures of all of them. She’s been a scantily clad warrior, a practically clad warrior, a princess and countless other things over the years.

Sure, Monica has done the cyberpunk thing, but other than that she’s mostly gotten contemporary clothing.

Well, all that changes today.

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Today, Monica gets to be an elf.

You might remember the doodle version of this set from a while ago. Clearly, I decided against drawing the lute.

She’s already colored and I can not wait to show her off next week.

Southwest Boho Paper Doll to Print

southwest-logo-mia-colorSo, 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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Things I love: All the skirts. The bag. Those shoes. That cardigan.

Things I’m not sure about: Her hair. The V-neck top. The choice of base color.

Still, I am going to call this one a win.

Southwestern Boho Paper Doll Set to Print and Color

southwest-logo-miaAccording to one of the fashion magazines I bought in September, Southwestern is the new Boho.

Personally, I sill like Boho better and a lot of Southerwestern inspired fashion gets dangerously close to worrying cultural appropriation of the area’s Native peoples and that kinda bothers to me.

Never the less, I wanted to get to play around with some of the geometric patterns that are common in the style while steering clear of directly borrowing anything, because there’s a lot of Pendelton blanket patterning in this trend and that gets complicated.

Pendelton woolen mills, their blankets, and their relationship to Native peoples is written about eloquently by Beyond Buckskin, Slate (posted on Beyond Buckskin, I couldn’t find the article on Slate) and Native Appropriations. I am not even going to get into that conversation, but I think consideration should be made when dealing with anything “tribal” and fashion related.

Anyway, these were all things on my mind as I stepped lightly into the Southwest Boho trend of fall 2014.

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Mia’s modeling these costumes, because I drew three sets of contemporary fashion at once. There’s going to eventually be a brights set for Margot, a girly set for Monica and then this set which got assigned to Mia. Had someone asked me which of these I was going to finish first, this would not have been the winner, and yet here we are.

Sometimes my paper dolling works in mysterious ways.

Circus Paper Doll in Black, White, Red, and Pink

logo-circus-colorLast week, the circus came to town in black and white for coloring, but here the paper doll set is in full color. I am really very pleased with how she came out. Sometimes, I know what I am doing with a paper doll set before I start coloring. Other times, I have no idea what I am going do with colors. In this paper doll’s case, I had a pretty clear idea of where I was going to go before I got there.

One thing I noticed as I was collecting images on my Dark Circus Pinterest board was that there was a bunch of red and black. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the red and black, but I knew there was going to be a lot of it.

Creating a red and black paper doll set was kind a boring, so I did not go with a strictly red and black color scheme (though there is a lot of black and white here).


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With straight red, black and white, I got bored very quickly and worried about the scheme clashing with the paper dolls pink hair. Instead, I decided to try basically creating two sets in one. There is a black and red set and also a pink and black set. Both sets had a pair of shoes and there are some pieces which can be worn with either color scheme.

I think this effect of “two sets” in one works, because circuses are all about costumes and costumes tend to match more than normal clothing.

Circus Paper Doll for Coloring

logo-circus-bwMarisole’s gone to the circus this monday, complete with makeup.

I have mixed feelings about circuses truth be told. Sometimes I like them and sometimes I find them deeply creepy. I’m not afraid of clowns or anything, but there is something slightly off dark and strange that runs through the whole idea of circuses and carnivals.

So, I’ve been drawing paper dolls for a long time and I always expect to run out of the ideas, but then I run into new things on a fairly regular basis that I want to do or try out. I don’t know that I’ve ever really done anything like this set. I started collecting circus images that I liked on Dark Circus Pinterest board and then eventually those images evolved into this set of doodles which evolved into this paper doll set.


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I was going for fashion as much as reality with these outfits. I can’t imagine a clown wearing such insane high heels, for example. My Dark Circus board where I was collecting images evolved into being as much about fashion as it was about circuses.

I’m nervous about coloring this set. I was going to go strictly black and red, but then I really want her to have pink hair.

Problem, will the pink hair clash with the red and black? I just don’t know. Guess the only way to find out is to start coloring.

Renaissance Paper Doll Gowns for Marisole Monday

logo-noble-lady-colorI must have colored and re-colored today’s Marisole Monday & Friends paper doll set, a dozen times before I settled on this sort of dusty teal, cream and rose color scheme. Seriously, sometimes paper doll coloring is really quite frustrating.

I do love the way the paper dolls look when they are colored and I like choosing colors and playing with color schemes. I don’t think I could ever switch to just black and white.

I really wanted to do a sort of classic princess/fantasy look with this set. I don’t generally draw thinking about children, but sometimes after I’ve done some of my stranger paper dolls (like the dark circus paper doll I’m working on), I find I want to also do things that are strictly for kids.

Of course, I also stand by my rule that if you don’t think one of my paper dolls should be given to a child, than don’t give it to a child.


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The next things down the pike are going to be a historical poppet set later this week and then a Marisole circus set and then I’m honestly not sure… Flock need some love and so that might be the next thing to work.

Pseudo-Renaissance Fantasy Gowns for Marisole

logo-noble-lady-bwFirst things first- Happy Labor Day to those in the United States who, like me, get it off from work.

Yay for holidays!!

Marisole is getting all fantasy today in some elegant dresses. I had originally planned on doing some patterns on her dresses, but in the end I just decided to leave them plain. After working on my new Lady of the Manor set, I’ve had these pseudo-renaissance styles of dresses on my mind as of late. Though, I confess, there is not much very renaissance about the dresses, unless you look really hard.

Still, I suppose a somewhat classic set of fantasy dresses and some shoes are nothing to be ashamed of.


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I do really like all her accessories. Over the years, I’ve drawn a lot of books for paper dolls (and I don’t plan on stopping… I love books and I wish they still had clasps on them…), but I did want to give her some unique accessories. I am particularly pleased with how the fan came out.

I guess in the end I’d say that she’s not the best Marisole fantasy paper doll I have ever drawn, but she is pretty good and I am still trying to get back into my patterns after taking a bit of break to deal with less fun, back-end blog issues.

Speaking of backend blog issues, I am going to be changing up the way things look around here soon, so just be aware. 🙂