Printable Paper Dolls from Paper Thin Personas

Three Marisole Monday Paper Dolls in Black and White

May 28, 2020March 28, 2016

I wasn’t sure what to do post today, because I am taking the month of April off and I was struggling to decide what to do with this last Monday. Then I discovered I had three Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper dolls that I converted to black and white last year that I hadn’t posted.

So, now I am. 🙂

First up we have Knights and Ladies, one of my very early fantasy paper dolls in black and white. When I first drew this paper doll, I think the sleeves were inspired by the 1830s. I think… It has been a few years. 🙂

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for this Paper Doll in Color}

Next, we have what is my mother’s favorite of all my paper dolls- my commercial fisher paper doll. I still am not totally pleased by the salmon, but I think the halibut came out very well. While I no longer own quite so many pieces of fishing clothing, I certainly did in my younger days.

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Last, but not least, one of my very early fantasy paper dolls. She was originally done all in shades of pink, so that was what why she was named Princess in Pink. Of course, now you could color her in any way you want and therefore she could be a Princess in Blue or a Princess in Orange or a Princess in Pistachio.

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I hope everyone had a lovely Easter if they celebrated. Mine was delightfully quiet.

There will be formal announcement of my April hiatus on Wednesday.

Faye’s Casual Afternoon: Paper Doll Coloring Sheet

May 28, 2020March 25, 2016

Today, we have a paper doll coloring sheet for Faye of Mini-Maiden fame. One thing I try to do with the contemporary casual style Mini-Maidens is make sure there is some unique pieces to each set, but also that every set could be combined. I mean, think about it, if you put together Greta in Autumn, Meet Faye, Isadora in Ruffles and Bows, Faye’s Fashionable Geometrics, Meet Greta, Hazel’s Geometric Style, Meet Hazel and Hazel’s Fresh Fashions than you would have nine paper dolls and at least 98 pieces of clothing and shoes. I decided not to even count the necklaces and purses and things.

The point I am trying to make, all be it maybe obliquely, is that every Mini-Maiden paper doll coloring sheet builds on every other one, allowing a ton of options that are fun. Because all the clothing can be shared among the paper dolls, there really are endless options.

Plus, if you’re hosting Easter and you need something to distract some small children, might I recommend printing out a few black and white paper doll sets to color? I swear it works. One friend told me it got her five year olds to be occupied for a whole 30 minutes.

Not to brag or anything, but seriously, have you tried to occupy five year olds before? Totally impossible.

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Anyway, moving back to today’s paper doll and away from the difficulties with occupying small children- I did something I haven’t done in a long time and tried to do a tweed texture on the skirt. I used to do a lot of texture in my black and white sets (here’s a better example of the “tweed texture”) and then I kinda abandoned it, but I’m trying to get back into the practice. I also did a crop top. I might hate them, but they seem to be coming back into style.

Though… I mean, I lived through the 90s and I would really rather not have to live through them again fashion-wise.

If you want more paper dolls featuring Faye, there are quite a few here.

So, Monday there will be some black and white Marisole Monday paper dolls I found in my archives and then I will probably be going on a haitus for the month of April. I need some breathing room right now and I think I should take it.

Thoughts? Comments? As always, I love to hear from y’all.

Mikhail at the After the End: A Male Paper Doll

May 28, 2020March 21, 2016

Last Monday, I posted today’s male paper doll set in black and white. Today, Mikhail is up in color with his world ending fashion statements. I mean, you want to look good at the end of the world, don’t you?

Post-apocalyptic fashion is something that fascinates me. I collect photos and idea on Pinterest even if I’m not prepping for a set, because then when I do want something I can go looking for it. So, I have a whole board devoted to Post-Apocalyptic clothing. This is something I encourage everyone to do. After Wenesday’s post about Paper Doll Principles, I noticed a lot of people asked how I came up with ideas.

Someday, I’ll write on that (in fact, I am working on it now), but for now the short advice I will give everyone is this:

There is not such thing as a totally unique idea. Inspiration comes from having easy and ready access to the things that you like. By having a collection of other’s Post-apoolcyptic fashon ideas at my fingertips, it was easy for me to develop my own.

So, I urge you if you are struggling. Collect images and ideas that intrique you. If I ever draw another post-apocalyptic paper doll, I’ve got 188 images to help me come up with ideas.

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To continue our discussion on inspiration, here’s a shirt that inspired me, a leather harness, this shirt and these boots. All those pieces inspired this set of paper doll clothing and I am sure if I looked I could find more images that I found that inspired me. I can tell you that the red and blue shirt was sorta a riff on the Captain American shield and came about, because I got sick of coloring things green and tan.

I’m still not totally pleased with his hair. I think there’s something off about the angle.

Anyway, as always, let me know what you think in the comments and if you want to support the blog, please consider becoming a patron.

Nautical Summer: Paper Doll Clothing

May 19, 2020March 18, 2016

One of the challenges of the Poppets is coming up with ideas, because contemporary children’s clothing is strangely the same as contemporary adult clothing, just shrunk down. (I could go into a while childhood studies discussion of this, but let’s not.) I however think that kids should look like kids, not like mini-adults and therefore I tend towards old-fashioned kids clothing. The Poppets, being children’s dolls, also get semi-old fashioned kids clothes. What can I say? My paper doll clothing tends to reflect my interests.

Something about warm weather always gets me thinking about the seashore. Today it was 80 degrees outside! Spring has come to Alabama and while I don’t dislike winter, I love Spring and Fall in my adopted state. It’s warm enough to go outside without a jacket and not yet so warm that I don’t want to go outside, becuase it’s over 90 degrees and 80% humidity. In honor of Spring, I decided to post nautical paper doll clothing.

A set of nautical inspired paper doll clothes for the Poppet paper doll series. Also available in black and white from paperthinpersonas.com.

A set of nautical inspired printable paper doll clothes for the Poppet paper doll series. Also available in color from paperthinpersonas.com.

{Download a PDF in Color} {View a 150 dpi PNG in Color}{Download a PDF to Color} {View a 150 dpi PNG to Color} {Poppet Paper Dolls to Wear These Clothes}

This whole set was inspired by this wonderful Whale fabric I found on Pinterest. I have a whole board devoted to patterns and I use it to collect inspiring pieces of fabric, wall paper or carpets that I see. Anyway, I saw that whale and I thought, “I bet that would make a cute motif for a t-shirt.”

Of course, by the time I was done it looked a lot different than the one on the fabric, but that was my inspiration for the top.

It’s always amazing to me what things can inspired other things. 🙂

So, I was trying to print some of these out to send to a friend and I discovered that on a Windows machine, Adobe’s fit to page works totally different than on a Mac. I couldn’t just move the image over to fit in the printable space. It was very annoying.

Since these guys are sized to print out as a half page, because I originally conceived of one day putting them into booklet format, the placement of the image really does matter. To fix this problem, I stick a one inch white border around the PDF.

If you’ve always been printing them as a 5 by 8, this might not matter. However, if you have been printing them as a larger scale, this might matter for fit purposes.

Let me know if anyone hates this and I’ll decide if I can come up with a better solution that doesn’t require me re-doing the whole series.

Mikhail at the After End of the World…. A guy paper doll

May 28, 2020March 14, 2016

Today my guy paper dolls are getting all post-apocalyptic in their Mad-Maxian attire. Well, really just one has Mad Max inspired clothing, but Mikhail can share with his friends. (Okay, friend… There’s just Marcus 2.0 right now.)

So, I owe a big thank you to Kitrona who back in my suits set for the guys where I was busy complaining about how I never know what to draw for male paper dolls, she suggested post-apocalyptic.

Duly inspired, I sketched out this set a few weeks ago. It came together fast, mostly because I was out of Marisole Monday & Friend’s backlog with my last post and I desperately needed to get it done or I would have had nothing to post this morning.

And that would have been sad.

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Today, the guy paper doll is Mikhail. this only the second Mikhail set. Perviously, he was a knight. Here’s a guide to all the Marisole Monday & Friend’s paper dolls. I know sometimes people have trouble sorting out that series and I totally get it. I mean, I live with them, y’all just have them come visit.

I really should give Mikhail some more normal clothing- for when he’s not struggling to survive the end of the world and/0r fighting dragons, but I find modern guys clothing so boring.

Yeah, I’ve complained about that before. I know.

Last, but not least, I always love to read comments, so please feel free to let me know what you think of today’s guy paper doll.

A Lady in Armor: A Female Knight Paper Doll

May 28, 2020March 11, 2016

Allow me to be blunt, I am not one of those people who gets upset about skimpy lady armor. I am far too big of a fan of Xena and Hercules for that, but I think there is a place in my fantasy world for skimpy armor and there is a place in my fantasy world for practical armor and mostly there is a place for stuff that falls in-between. Today’s paper doll is a female knight whose armor falls more into the practical camp than the skimpy armor camp.

But don’t worry skimpy armor fans, I’ve got a B&B set planned that falls into that camp, too.

I knew I was going to give my female knight short hair from the beginning, but that was because I originally had conceptions of drawing a helmet. Well, helmets are HARD, so instead we have her without a helmet, but with short hair. Actually, I think the paper doll, if not her clothing, could easily hop into the modern era and be a young stylish Black woman in 2016, but right she’s being a young stylish knight.

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One of the reasons I like armor sets is that coloring them is really fast. I mean, armor is silver. That’s it. Done.

Uncreative, well, perhaps, but still I like my projects simple and straight forward.

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Over the years, I have always struggled with chainmail. I think this chainmail is slightly better than some, but I worry its too obvious where I patched together my swatches of tiny circles. Also, is it chainmail, chainmaile, chain mail or chain maile? Does anyone know?

That has been bothering me as I write up this post.

Anyway, happy Friday, y’all. Have a safe wonderful weekend.

Roses & Violins: A Lolita fashion Paper Doll in Color!

May 28, 2020March 7, 2016

Last Monday, I mentioned I used a lot of Lolita fashion blogs to do my research for my Lolita fashion paper doll, but I didn’t mention which ones specifically, so let me clear that up.

My favorite Lolita fashion blog was F Yeah Lolita which had a great post on Building a Complete Lolita Wardrobe. Her wardrobe template starts with sixteen pieces which can be mixed and matched into 14 different outfit combinations. I actually think her advice rings true even if you’re not trying to build a Lolita wardrobe. A few mix and match basics and a good pair of shoes, can get you through many a week of work, especially on a tight budget. Other blogs I found useful and interesting were Parfait Doll, Lolita Fashion(Tumblr), Ruffles & Steam (tumblr) and Portal of Fantasy (tumblr).

I also totally love Lolita Fashion Update where Lolita brand releases are posted (though it hasn’t been updated in a while 🙁 ). Store sites were hit and miss. As far as I can tell, a lot of these Japanese brands to pre-release sales and it seems like things sell out and therefore never get posted to their store sites. (Maybe I’m wrong about this, but that’s been my gut instinct), here’s the brands I based my designs off of Mary Magdalene, Victorian Maiden, Innocent World and Angelic Pretty (though they tend more towards Sweet Lolita).

Okay, so I was looking for photos of Classic Lolita style to link, so people would know what I was basing this on and I found this photo of two Lolitas on the street wearing Classic Lolita dresses from Tokyo Fashion and one of them has the Violin purse! Check it out. I was so excited to see the purse “in the wild”, so to speak. The larger version is a bit more complex than Mia’s mini paper version.

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I’m a big believer in using color to tell a story. Years ago, a friend used to joke that Steampunk was “Gothic clothing colored brown” and there is some truth to that observation. Color has a lot of power. I could have gone Gothic Lolita or Sweet Lolita with these outfits if I had chosen another color scheme, but I liked the soft hues associated with Classic Lolita, so that was what I settled on. Also, I have a Sweet and Gothic Lolita paper dolls already which illustrate this principle by being the same set colored two different ways.

I’m still regretting that I didn’t draw her any hats or bows. It was totally my intention to, but then I forgot and then I didn’t notice I’d forgotten until it was too late. Sigh. A rose cover bonnet like these one would really fill out her look. Oh well, I’m just going to have to save for a different paper doll set, I guess.

There is an extra outfit over on my Patreon page– shoes, a parasol and dress. You don’t have to be a patron to download it and it will fit in with the rest of Mia‘s Classic Lolita wardrobe. Also give her some pink shoes to go with her more pink dresses.

If you like the Lolita fashion style, check out my Lolita tag for more paper dolls inspired by this style.

Please leave a comment if you like, because you know I love feedback. 🙂

Ms Mannequin In the Summer: Paper Doll Clothing

May 28, 2020March 4, 2016

So, whenever I think of summer I think of bright colors and boho vibes and white pants. (I don’t own white pants, but I actually really want a pair.) So, inspired I confess by a Patron who said “Summer” when I asked what themes I should explore in 2016, I wanted to think about what made paper doll clothing feel like summer clothing and not spring, autumn or winter.

Summer to me is bright and colorful. Summer is flowing and you can imagine breezes moving clothing around. From my Alaskan childhood, I will also forever associate summer with long days, commercial fishing and bonfires on the beach. I wanted though to think of summer from a different point of view. Less of a jeans tucked into Xtratufs (we were wearing boots over our jeans long before it was cool) and more white sand beaches, board walks and iced lattes.

In short, boho fantasy summer that I never experienced as a child. (Nor perhaps really even exists outside the realm of paper doll life.)

Still, what are paper dolls for if not for exploring a bit of fantasy?

Nine mix and match piece of paper doll clothing for the Ms. Mannequin series. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com.

Nine mix and match piece of colorable paper doll clothing for the Ms. Mannequin series. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com.

{Click Here for a PDF in Color} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG in Color}{Click Here for a PDF of Black and White} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG in Black and White}
{Click Here for More Clothes}{Click Here for Paper Dolls to Dress}

So, as for the specifics of today’s Ms. Mannequin set, I try to make each page of clothing for the Ms. Mannequin series make sense as a stand alone page. So, for this page, I wanted to focus on tops and bottoms that could be mixed and matched. I’m a little unsure about the tunic with the ruffles on the hem, since I don’t know how well it will layer over the other pieces, but I keep seeing that style about, so I wanted to include it. Colorwise, I went with a theme I tend to like a lot which is greens and yellows paired with pinks and teals. There isn’t really a “neutral” in this set, except the white trousers, but I think everything mixes and matches pretty well anyway. I was going to draw skinny jeans, but I’ve already drawn them over on this set of Ms. Mannequin clothing.

In fact, if you’re looking for more mix and match options, I would recommend these white capri pants (or the gray shorts), these khaki capri pants and this pair of jeans.

Any of the Ms. Mannequin dolls can wear these pieces, but I think Tanya’s skintone would be set of very nicely by the teal and yellow tunic.

Thoughts about summer? Let me know in a comment. 🙂

Roses & Violins: Classic Lolita Fashion Paper Doll

May 28, 2020February 29, 2016

As I mentioned on Wednesday, I had to get this set of paper dolls done, or I wouldn’t have anything to be posted today. Anyway, as I said today’s classic Lolita fashion paper doll set was partially the result of a request from a patron and partly the result of me never being able to extract decent black and white version of my sweet Lolita and gothic Lolita paper doll sets.

So, I inspired by this violin purse from the Japanese fashion company Innocent World. While I will admit in a heartbeat to not being an expect on Lolita fashion, which is a Japanese street style based on Victorian children’s clothing, I have noticed that a lot of Lolita outfits (called coordinates) seem to be heavily themed. Once I settled on the purse, I knew I wanted the patterns of several of the pieces to have a music or violin theme.

I’ve also noticed that many of the Lolita fashion blogs I read while working on this set, seem to recommend buying JSKs (Jumper-Skirts, I think?) over full dresses, since these can be worn over various blouses. The paper doll pose makes that sort of layering tough, but the short sleeved dress on the far left is meant to be a JSK. I have a Lolita Style pintrest board where you can see way more of my inspiration.

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My one big regret about this set is that I didn’t do any hats or bows, which are a big part of Lolita. Oh well… I suppose nothing is perfect. Mia is modeling today’s fashions, if you are keeping track of who is who in the Marisole Monday & Friend’s family.

I did kinda got carried away designing pieces for this set and I ended up with two many to fit on the page. Rather than just let them rot on my hard drive, I posted them over on my Patreon page. You don’t have to be a Patron to view or download them. You can see the extra dress, shoes and parasol here. Next week, I’ll post the color versions there as well.

I think if I end up with “extra” pieces in the future, my Patreon page will be a handy place to put them.

Thoughts on my foray into classic Lolita fashion? Feel free to leave me a comment.

A 1960s Paper Doll to Color Featuring Isadora

May 19, 2020February 26, 2016

I have, over the years, created a lot of paper doll sets and I just couldn’t believe I’ve only done one 1960s paper doll and I haven’t felt comfortable calling her historical, because I can’t verify my sources on her. So, here’s another one, giving me two 1960s paper dolls.

Let’s talk sources, since that’s what divides “historical” paper dolls from “inspired by” paper dolls. (At least that’s my standard today, I haven’t always been SO militant about it.)

The dresses for this paper doll set were drawn based on this image and this image both of which are Creators Studios fashion illustrations from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Two of the other dresses were based on pattern covers from McCalls in 1965 and Simplicity in 1965. Ankle boots from the V&A dated 1967.

Another of the dresses is an André Courrèges mini-dresses from 1965 thanks to the FIDM Museum Blog which is totally my favorite museum blog. Is that bad? Am I allowed to have a favorite? Cause I totally do.

I swear I had a reference for her other boots and her pants and matching top, but I’ll be darned if I can find them… So, I’ll add them if I track them down.

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So, can I confess that I tend to get Isadora and Hazel confused? I totally do. And so as I was working on this post, I actually had it labeled as Hazel for a few hours before I realized that I wasn’t looking at Hazel.

How embarrassing!

Today’s 1960s paper doll was a request from one of my Patrons. (Want to join?) At the end of 2015, I sent a private survey to all my Patrons asking for ideas for 2016. It was anonymous, so I don’t know who put down 1960s, but I do confess it made me realize I’d done very few 1960s paper dolls.

And that was easy to fix!

Thoughts on Isadora and her sixties fashions?

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