Reviews

I don’t mean to brag, but I pride myself on the diversity of my paper doll drawings. I do a lot of different themes, but Alina Kolluri might well give me a run for my money. Her work ranges from animals to mermaids to Christmas to 1960s fashions. Today, I want to look at the two paper doll books of hers I own- Gal Pals Paper Dolls and Mod Brides. These two were a gift, clearly by someone who knows my taste in paper dolls. These are probably the two I would have chosen, because I love historical fashion paper dolls. Both are from Paper Doll Review, but my feelings about them couldn’t be more different.

Spoiler: One of these books I loved so much and one of them I was super disappointed by. Let’s start with the one I didn’t like, so we can end on a high note.

Mod Brides Paper Dolls

Mod Brides is, as one might expect, a foray into 1960s fashions. The book is smaller, measuring 8.5 by 11 inches, rather than 9 by 12. There’s four dolls on the back which confused me a little, because from the cover I would have thought there would have been five, but that’s not really important. I like the cover design, I think it has some wonderful movement and the doily design really echos the flowers in the background and the pop graphic quality of Kolluri’s art.

I confess the rest of the graphic design in the book is kinda boring. The dresses are laid out fine, but there’s no backgrounds and no real attention is paid, it feels, to making the interior shine.

I wish, as always, there had been more variety in the dolls skin tones. The poses are also very stiff, but that’s just Kolluri’s style. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the paper doll’s hair. It didn’t read as super 1960s to me, because it felt like it lacked the volume of the era, but I think some of that was done to accommodate hats and veils, so I 100% understand those compromises.

Mod Brides is stuffed with clothing. It’s a total of 8 pages of very very 1960s fashions with peaches and pistachio greens abounding. It all looks pretty correct to me- including the shapes of the dresses- which for the 1960s are super specific. The lace details on a lot of the clothing are amazing, as is the drape of those veils. As someone who has avoided drawing wedding dresses, because I hate drawing lace, I have to say this felt like a reminder that it is possible to render lace beautifully in line work.

Plus, when you work in white, getting depth is hard. The light grey Kolluri uses really works to her advantage here.

As usual with Paper Doll Review, I am always happy with the quality of the card-stock and the paper. The covers are a little thin, but the paper feels satin smooth. I think it would be a dream to cut. I can imagine spending hours carefully trimming out these little outfits.

Not that I plan to do that, but if I did, I think I would be happy.

So, now for the big problem- I was super disappointed in the quality of the images. So disappointed that I almost didn’t review this book. The entire book looks slightly out of focus. And somehow the blacks aren’t black enough, so it almost feels pixelated. Or like somehow the images were interpolated one two many times by a graphic design program. For whatever cause, the results are disappointing and distracting.

I tried to capture this on camera and I don’t think I really managed to do it. It’s a case, I suspect, of the digital printing being part of the problem.

Because of the image quality, I just can’t recommend picking up Mod Brides. It’s super frustrating, because over all, the book’s content is fun. However, I can’t seem myself ever flipping through it again to just enjoy the visuals.

Let’s move on to a book that I am utterly in love with and will now get to gush about.

Gal Pals Paper Dolls

To start with the basics, Gal Pals Paper Dolls has four dolls and a lot of clothing. It’s a 9 by 12 inch book. The cover says 93 fashions and I could get nit-picky about that. There’s probably 93 pieces, but is a purse a fashion? Hmmm… Never the less, I’ve rarely seen a paper doll book so stuffed with clothing. This seems to be a trend with Kolluri’s work and I like it! Each doll has at least a dozen outfits, one of which is a wedding dress. Plus, there’s matching hats and purses for many of them.

The doll’s faces are super cute, the poses feel borrowed from a WW2 magazine which is awesome. I adore their victory roll hairstyles. Can we gush over the Gal Pal’s cover for a minute? It’s maybe the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. The dolls are flowers! Flowers in a watering can!

(Note: I’m like 95% sure this is a reference to 1940s paper doll books where the cover would have cut outs revealing the doll’s faces beneath.)

Also, did I mention that the borders on the pages of clothing for each doll match the doll’s swimsuits? How fun and cute is that. It’s so clearly thought out that it makes me super happy. This is paper doll book design at its best. All over the book the design is top notch. So much glorious attention to detail.

Granting that I didn’t exactly look for sources, within the confines of the highly stylized art, the clothing seems accurate to the era. There’s day dresses, coats, suits… everything. Even though I am not a wedding dress person, how fun is it that every doll has a wedding dress? The one for Patty (bottom left) looks strikingly like what my Grandmother was married in during WW2 (which might be why I photographed it.)

The fact that each doll basically has a micro-wardrobe is such a cool concept. I can totally imagine how much I would have liked this book as a kid. I can picture myself on the couch carefully cutting out each outfit, penciling the doll’s name on the back, and diligently storing them all in little envelopes.

(Yeah, given my paper doll storage habits as a child, I sorta should have known I would end up a librarian.)

So, if you haven’t already guessed, I love Gal Pals! I really have nothing negative to say about it. If you like color, whimsy, and want a fun diversion, here it is. It was wonderful to see a black doll included, though another skin-tone or two would have been nice.

I’m super happy to have added this to my collection. If you don’t own one, go grab it! Gal Pals is the kind of paper doll book that makes my heart happy!

(Also, I don’t think I’ve ever used this many exclamation points in one blog post. I feel like I should apologize to my college writing professors who would be wincing right now.)

I guess, as I finish this up, I think that these books illustrate how important graphic design is to an effective paper doll book and how work by the same artist can strike me totally differently. Even if the image quality of Mod Brides had been up to snuff, Gal Pals is just a better book. So much attention has been paid to all the tiny details and those details matter so much.

As my niece gets older and more ready for paper dolls, I often think about if I would buy the books I review for her. And Gal Pals I 100% would pick her up a copy.

I am super excited today to get to write a little about the latest issue of Paper Doll Review that arrived a few days ago. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can grab it from Paper Doll review or subscribe, which is what I do.

I always look forward to Paper Doll Review when it comes in the mail, though I don’t draw for it that much. I was still recovering from my surgery when the deadline was and I hate recycling old things for the magazine (which I know is silly), so I let this one slide. I sort of regret it, because it is always fun to see my stuff in there along with other artists I super respect.

I am working on an animal paper doll for the next issue and let’s just say- not the easiest thing I’ve worked on!

Renaldo Barnette was the featured artist and his interview was fascinating, plus there were many images of his amazing at. You don’t follow him on Instagram, you should, because there’s always fun stuff to see. His ability to render fabric texture in markers (I think it’s markers?) is awe inspiring.

There was an article about Katy Keene where I learned some things I didn’t know about the history of the comic. A lot of space in the magazine was devoted to the Katy Keen Dress-A-Doll which was fun, but I confess I’m not the biggest Katy Keen fan on the planet. Nothing against her, of course, but there’s a lack of nostalgia for me, because I didn’t grow up with Katy Keen comics I think the same way people twenty years older than me did.

While I was going through the magazine, I noticed that two of my favorite Dress-A-Doll designs by artist Tori Wright had exposed skin. Wright illustrated the doll’s skin tone for those outfits brown, much darker than the Dress-A-Doll figure. It made me wonder what the result of dressing Katy in some of these costumes would have been- a sort of strange paper doll semi-black face? I realized that if I had wanted to dress Katy up in these outfits it felt wrong somehow to do so.

So, I thought, maybe they could have had a second dress-a-doll for those outfits that had brown skin. After that thought, I realized I couldn’t recall ever seeing a Dress-A-Doll in these magazines that wasn’t white. I don’t own enough back issues of Paper Doll Studio (no longer in print) or Paper Doll Review to do a complete survey, but the ones I have this was the case.

If the magazine was going to feature an artist, like Renaldo Barnette, whose rendering of black models is such a feature of his work, surely there could be a black Dress-A-Doll, Katy Keene inspired or otherwise? I’d love to see Barnette’s version of Katy Keene. I bet that would be fantastic.

If you don’t subscribe to Paper Doll Review, I would so highly recommend it! There’s some magical about getting a paper magazine in the mail every few months and I’m always so impressed the articles, layout, and amazing paper doll art featured. I took a few pictures of my favorite pages, but I didn’t want to reveal all the good stuff.

Did you get this latest issue of Paper Doll Review? What did you think of the magazine?

I am so happy to be getting back to paper doll book reviews. I did a few last year and I super enjoyed them, so here comes another one! One thing about these photos, the book is super glossy and it was super hard to get shots without bad glare. I did my best with my limited camera skills, but it’s far from perfect.

Glamorous Fashions of the Gilded Age Paper Dolls by Eileen Rudisill Miller came out from Dover Publications in 2020. It’s letter sized, has four dolls (two ladies and two gents). Clothingwise the ladies get 26 gowns and each gent gets an a morning coat to wear over their tuxedos. Apparently, balls and weddings are what the men are dressed for. Also, hats… a lot of fantastic hats. I am very jealous of Miller’s ability to draw hats.

The two male paper dolls both have very distinct faces. The blond sort of reminds me of Brad Pitt. I confess that the two lady paper dolls look the same to me. I wish they had maybe different skin-tones or more character in their faces. Heck, given that these dolls can’t share clothing, each one could have been taller or shorter or fatter or black or… there’s a whole range of options. There’s no reason all four dolls needed to be white skinny people.

I wish there was more paper doll diversity in general, but in the historical paper doll book world it’s particularly lacking. I find I am noticing it more than I used to. It’s not a new problem, though.

While the back of the book identifies the Gilded Age as being from the late 1860s to the late 1890s, I’ve never thought of it as starting that early. I’ve always thought of it as the last 30 years of the 19th century. My only quibble with using that language is that it gives the impression the book will cover those dates and it doesn’t. The dresses in the book are super 1880s.

You know, that silhouette where you could balance a tea-tray on the hard lines of the bustle? Yeah, that look.

This paper doll book is high quality. The covers are thick card stock and the interior pages are also card stock, but thinner. Everything is high gloss which, while super frustrating to photograph, does result in really brilliant color. The insides of the covers can be turned into a “ballroom scene”. It’s a neat idea, though I missed historical information from older Dover books.

All in all, while I might have some quibbles about the historical accuracy of most of these dresses, I loved the brilliant colors, hats, and Miller’s use of graphic shapes to great impact. I hadn’t bought a Dover paper doll book in a while and I’d gotten used to lighter weight paper in book interiors. While I suspect cutting this one out would be a little hard on the hands, the stiffer papers feels like it would stand up to hours of play. It makes me miss that style of paper doll book more than I thought I would.

This one is certainly worth your time if you have, like I do, a fondness for bustles. Just don’t expect much on the “historical accuracy” front or the paper doll diversity front. You can grab Glamorous Fashions of the Gilded Age Paper Dolls direct from Dover Publications or a lot of other places online.

I’m opening up comments on this one, as I am curious if other people have seen this book or if they have a paper doll book they’d like me to review. Let me know!

So, here is my review of the new paper doll book, Regency Paper Dolls by Amanda Kastner. There are things I love about this book and things which, frankly, I found a little bit less then ideal.

Let me start by saying, I am 100% behind more artists making paper dolls. I have been keeping track of paper doll new releases for my newsletter. So, when I saw a paper doll book was out by someone I didn’t know and it was historical fashion, I ordered it. Is there anything that could be better than that combo?

I think not.

The basics- This book is by Amanda Kastner, also known as Story Seamstress. It is published by Amazon’s self-publishing imprint, I believe. It is letter sized and has three dolls on the covers, a title page, 20 pages of clothing/furniture/stuff and two blank pages in the back. There is also a coloring book version.

I love the art, the line-work is delightful and there’s a sweet whimsy to it. It feels friendly, if that makes sense. The dolls all have very different faces and the hair is fantastic. Plus, each face is distinct looking, though I am like 80% sure the chins are duplicated. But I am not going to be upset about that, I reuse heads all the time in my own art. Who am I to judge?

While there’s some variation in skin tone, I’d love to have seen at least one dark brown paper doll rather than two different shades of white and one sort of tan paper doll. The lack of paper doll diversity in historical paper doll books is something I rail against often (and plan to continue to do so.)

Moving on, the style of Regency Paper Dolls feels almost like collage. Each page is double-sided with cutouts on one-side and a pattern on the back. The patterns on the dresses are repeated in the backgrounds in a different scale. The effect is super charming. Plus, she has drawn bonnets really well and I super need to get better at that, so I’ll be studying those closely.

And now, the downsides…. Most of these have to do with the Amazon Print on Demand situation, I suspect. The book feels cheaply made. I know when using print on demand that authors have limited options, but I can’t ignore this when paper dolls are so tactile. The covers are super thin and flimsy. The interior paper is nice and thick, but the whole book feels floppy. My cat already bent the cover by laying on it, so I’m not sure how it would stand up to actual children.

My biggest complaint is that the clothing is the same 5 plates repeated in different color schemes. There are over 100 pieces though and that’s super impressive. Never the less, I would have loved to have seen a long sleeved dress, a riding habit, a few more bonnets, a winter walking costume trimmed in fur… there are so many options!

One thing that stumped me is that the dolls have hair pieces on the title page. Even after staring at them for a few minutes, I’m not 100% clear on how the hair works. Do you glue them to the back of the doll’s heads? There was no explanation which surprised me since the rest of the instructions are wonderfully clear with little diagrams. Seriously, I wish I was this good at writing instructions for paper dolls.

Do I regret my purchase? Not at all, I am happy to get to add a paper doll book my an artist I didn’t know to my collection and I hope she does more. I would love to see her do some fairy tale paper dolls, I think her art would be lovely for that.

You can grab a copy of this paper doll book and the coloring book version I didn’t get from Amazon. I don’t think the printed books are offered elsewhere, but you can get downloads from her Etsy page to print your own.

So, the moment I learned Brenda Sneathen Mattox had a new paper doll book from Paper Doll Review of Victorian sporting outfits, I was in.

If there’s one myth about the Victorian era which won’t seem to die, it is the myth that women couldn’t do anything wearing a corset. The problem with propagating this myth is that it suggests women’s lack of agency in the 19th century European world was due to their clothing, rather than the patriarchal system that didn’t allow women a variety of basic rights.

So, anyway, Victorian Sports paper dolls got me excited, because women in the 19th century did lots of sports. We know this, because there’s extensive documentation. Tailoring magazines wouldn’t have published articles and patterns for women’s riding habits, hunting or hiking clothing if women weren’t out riding, hunting or hiking.

To start with the basics, the book has two dolls and 14 costumes. It measures 8.5 by 11 inches. The sports represented are Riding (1840s), Gymnastics (1850s), Croquet (1860s), Bathing (1860s), Hiking (1870s), Skating (1870s), Tennis (1880s), Baseball (1880s), Shooting (1880s), Fencing (1890s), Archery (1890s), Basketball (1890s), Cycling (1890s) and Golf (1890s). The costumes are beautifully rendered in colored pencil. I was particularly impressed by the tennis dress, because white is not an easy color to render.

The layout is great from the placement of the labels to the pairing of the costumes. There’s a subtle gradation to the pages that highlights the style of the art (which I think is colored pencil or watercolor? Not 100% sure). Additionally, a nice little bio in the beginning of Victorian Sports Paper Dolls tells about the artist, Brenda Sneathen Mattox. The book closes with a write up about Victorian sportswear by Lorna Currie Thomopoulos. The historian in me would have preferred something a little more in-depth about the topic, space was probably limited.

This is a book that feels really intentional and I love that.

The two dolls have wonderful faces that somehow feel very “healthy outdoors woman of the 1890s” to me. Their underwear is generic “19th century-ish” with the doll on the right looking more early 19th century and the doll on the left seeming more later 19th century. I did miss some indication of which costume went with which doll, even though they are facing different directions.

Some of the costumes had very wide skirts or a bicycle in the background which I suspect would benefit from a floating tab. The book doesn’t give an explanation or suggestion of floating tabs. That surprised me, because I learned about the handiness of floating tabs from a Brenda Sneathen Mattox book many years ago which had 1860s costumes. It’s a small thing, but paper doll functionality is important.

All in all, I was super pleased with Victorian Sports Paper Dolls and would certainly recommend you pick up a copy if you share my love of historical clothing, sporting or otherwise.

Actually, there’s several Victorian paper doll books from Paper Doll Review I love including this wonderful Worth book I own and should review someday and this book of non-white wedding dresses I don’t own, but want.

I got the most wonderful surprise in my mailbox last week- Issue 128 of Paper Doll Studio Magazine. The magazine, for those of you who don’t know, is merging with Paper Doll Review. I’ll talk more about this later in the post, promise.

The featured artist was JM Tolman. I was slightly familiar with her work from stumbling across her from her Etsy store and I always enjoy reading the interviews with the featured artists in the magazine. Her art style is super unique and unlike anyone else in the paper doll world right now.

The theme of the issue was Make Believe. Personally, I can’t think of a theme that I wanted to read more than this one. I mean, princesses, sci-fi, all things nerdy, this is was so what I love that I don’t even have words. I used some content from my Patreon project and reformatted it into this cute little fairy.

And seriously, every page of this issue had paper dolls on it that I wanted to photograph. Every page.

A few of my other favorite pieces from the issue were a Dungeons and Dragons paper doll by Dorta Meeiling Nielsen, because I have totally drawn paper dolls of my rpg characters. There was also a great article about cosplay by Tracy Williams with some of her beautiful paper dolls featured. Sylvia Kleindinst did a dress up cat with art inspired costumes. I’m biased, because the cat does look a bit my own furbaby Dewey.

There has been some sadness over the merger between Paper Doll Review and Paper Doll Studio Magazine. Personally, I super excited with this new chapter for the Original Paper Doll Artists Guild and our magazine. The world of paper doll lovers and artists is a small one and given the current climate for print publishing, having a magazine at all is amazing. I wish Jenny nothing but the absolute best as she continues into this new chapter for her paper doll publishing world.

By the way, if you have a subscription to Paper Doll Studio, you should get the merged magazine in 2021. If you don’t have a subscription, go grab one!

Speaking of new projects, there will be a whole new chapter for PTP in 2021. You might notice some small changes (like my new logos) around here as that happens, but there will be more changes in future. I’ll keep you all posted and if you’re a Patron, you’ll get even more info and some input. Join us!

Julie Allen Matthew‘s new book Rose and Ivy paper dolls published by Paper Doll Review press is what I am writing about today. I know both Julie and Jenny (who runs Paper Doll Review), but this isn’t sponsored or anything. I bought it with my own 13 dollars and thought I would share what I liked and didn’t like about the book, because I do like writing up my thoughts on various paper doll books.

So, let me start by giving the basic info. The book is a 8.5 by 11 inches staple bound. It has a light weight satin cardstock cover and the most beautiful interior paper. I didn’t cut into mine, but the feel of the paper is lovely. I think cutting up this book would be a dream.

The book has two dolls on the back, Ivy and Rose, who are each about 9 inches tall. There are 8 plates, so 16 pages. I counted 47 mix and match clothing pieces and 16 wigs, though I am not good at counting. So, I might be off. All in all, a pretty extensive wardrobe for these two girls.

The style is a neo-Victorian fantasy with lots of ruffles, floral patterns and cute hats. One thing Julie has done really well in this book is that the mix and match pieces color coordinate and the wigs often have flowers or other things, adding interest. I would have had so much fun with wigs as a kid.

Some of you may recall Julie’s 100 Day Project back in 2019. Three of us started, but (much like the Thunderdome) only one of us was left standing. That was Julie and her beautiful black and white creation. Julie is really good (much better than I am) at taking things she does for one thing and then refining them into something else for sale. So, this book is colored versions of those black and white illustrations.

Now, no paper doll book is perfect and this one is no exception. There are no stands or instructions for making stands with the book, nor is there any bio information about Julie or the concepts behind the paper dolls. It’s a small thing, but I think it would have been nice to include some of those details.

Also, there’s no identification on the clothing indicating which items are for which doll. A letter on the tabs would probably save some headache in that regard. Usually, I could tell by layout, but a few times I had to really think about it. I imagine if the pieces were cut out, it would be even more useful to indicate whose was whose.

All in all though, Rose and Ivy is a beautiful book in warm vivid color. The dolls are lovely, the clothing is fun and I think, in these Covid-19 times especially, it would make a wonderful afternoon toy for a child who likes paper dolls with pretty dresses. I would have adored this set as a child and drawn many more outfits for Rose and Ivy myself. I just know it.

You can pick up your own copy direct from Paper Doll Review.

I recently resubscribed to Paper Doll Studio magazine, as one of my goals for 2020 has been to submit more paper dolls to the magazine. I am always nervous about sending things in. I don’t know why, exactly, but I’ve always been shy about sharing my work beyond the blog or the occasional commission.

One of my favorite parts of the magazine is always the interview with the featured artist. In this case, it was the partnership between two artists- Erica Lange and Abby Polakow- who call themselves the Spindle Sisters.

I had seen their work on Etsy before, but I haven’t bought any of they art for my own collection. They mostly work in fairy tales as their source material.

While I like the fairy tale theme, I rarely buy paper doll books these days. I found their interview particularly interesting, because I have never had a collaborator over a prolonged period and reading about that process was enlightening.

It’s funny how I used to buy a lot more paper dolls and since I had to move back to Alaska and decide what I really wanted to move (I did move a lot of paper dolls) I find I’m less interested in adding to the collection. Funny how having to move boxes of paper dolls across the country make you hesitant to buy more paper dolls.

I wanted to show off one paper doll from the magazine. It was hard to pick a single one. In the end, I settled on this paper doll by Ralph Hogden. He drew many more beautiful dresses for the Mona Lisa which I thought was a really cool idea. It was also beautifully executed. The drape on the skirts of the paper dolls was particularly lovely.

One of the things I love about Paper Doll Studio magazine is that I get to see the work of a variety of artists many of whom don’t have a big online presence. And for this issue, the renaissance is such a big period of history with such diversity in dress, it was really interesting to see what places and time periods people chose to illustrate.

There were other amazing pieces, but I don’t want to give everything away. I will also give a shout out to Julie Matthews who had a great article on using Art Rage for illustration. Not something I am going to take on soon, but I love learning about how other people make paper dolls.

If you want a high res download of my paper doll contribution, the top of the page above, head over to Etsy and you can see her here. You can read about my research process if you want to know more about my foray into Renaissance dress.

Other fun features of the magazine included a good article on Renaissance clothing and a nice overview of Shakespearean paper dolls. I’ve never drawn any of Shakespeare’s characters as paper dolls and I don’t think I am likely to.

You can grab a copy of this issue from Paper Doll Review for 8 dollars, or I would grab a subscription. It’s a better deal.

Now, I need to decide what I’m drawing for the By the Sea issue before the end of May.

As always, issue 125 was a delight. The cover paper doll by Andrea Smith is beautiful. I’d seen her art around, but I wasn’t very familiar with her work. It’s always fun to find a new paper doll artist.

I always adore Larry Bassin’s work. I deeply respect artists who have such a distinct vision and I feel like very time I see his art, I instantly know who drew it. One of these days, I need to buy some of his paper dolls to add to my collection.

My other two favorites were by JM Tolman, an artist I’m not familiar with and Carol Peters. JM Tolman’s paper doll was a lovely tribute to the working women of the 2nd World War. Carol Peter’s pair of dancing couples paper dolls just blew me away. I would never think to take on such a challenging subject and the movement in the dolls and their clothing really brings them to life. It totally deserved the huge full page display it received in the magazine.

Submitting a paper doll to Paper Doll Studio Magazine is something I’ve wanted to do for ages. For the Green Issue, Jenny Taliadoros asked if she could use some of my paper dolls. I said sure, because why not? And then I thought, you know, I should really submit things and so here I am.

Tomorrow I’ll share the paper doll I created for the magazine and you can download and print her out full size, if you want to dress her up and play with her.