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Interstellar Seas: A Cute Alien Fashionista
Download Black and White PDF | Download Color PDF | More Paper Dolls from the Ensemble Eclectica Series
Today’s paper doll is a super cute alien with a sort of underwater theme. I mean, if I am going to draw space creature paper dolls, I think I should at least give them a fancy wardrove of mix and match clothing, right? Right. I mean, space creatures want to look cute, too.
I’m assuming that a desire to “look cute” comes with a sentience, which might be a pretty big assumption on my part. (Unrelated, but am I the only person who learned the term sentience from watching Star Trek as a kid?)
Other thoughts about today’s paper doll: One of her outfits was inspired by this outfit for Marisole Monday, also my sci-fi Pinterest fashion board always inspires these dolls. The color scheme was supposed to be “galaxy” meets “ocean”, but like… not convinced it works. When I was a teen, I really liked the character Oasis from Sluggy Freelance and that’s probably where my thing for multiple ponytails (pigtails?) came from.
I caught some sort of post-Thanksgiving bug which turned into bacteria pneumonia. So, then I ended up on a cocktail of antibiotics and all the side effects of those were super fun. Anyway, long story short- I am at like 80% capacity at the moment. However, I am looking at a week off work for the holidays (the Uni I work at closes) and therefore I am super psyched for this week to be over.
Going to draw lots, pet my cat, and maybe sew something. Super psyched to have a whole week off!
Anyway, I hope everyone has a lovely holiday and enjoys this second little space alien paper doll. There will be two more I think… yeah, two more.
Hanukkah Paper Dolls: The Eighth Night
Download Black and White PDF | Download All Eight Pages as One PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
Happy eighth night of Hanukkah and our paper dolls have many menorahs to show off, all shining brightly.
I wanted to make it super easy to download these Hanukkah paper dolls, so I added a link to a full 8 page PDF of the whole set that you can grab.
Today, let’s talk about menorahs. A Hanukkah menorah, also known as a hanukkiah, is a special nine-branched candle holder. Out of the nine lights, eight represent the nights of the holiday. Every night, an additional light is lit compared to the previous one. By the last night, all eight branches are shining brightly.
The ninth light is called the shamash (“helper”), which is used in some traditions to light the other eight. The purpose of the shamash is to adhere to the prohibition, specified in the Talmud, against using the Hanukkah lights for anything other than showing and thinking about the Hanukkah miracle. So, the shamash is available to do the work of lighting the other lights and give light if needed.
Except in times when antisemitism is so high that it would be dangerous to do so, menorahs are typically placed in windows, visible from the street. I like to position mine where I can keep an eye on it and ensure my cat doesn’t get too close. She tends to get closer than I would like to candles.
If you have more questions about Hanukkah, Chabad has a handy Hanukkah FAQ.
I wanted to draw three different styles of menorah, because they can look like all sorts of different things. I like this dinosaur one, myself.
This is the end of this series for Hanukkah 2023! I’ve been wanting to do a Hanukkah series for years, so I am happy I finally buckled down and got it done.
Hanukkah Paper Dolls: Seventh Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
Happy Hanukkah Night 7!
Continuing the theme of food for Hannukah, I had originally planned to feature challah here. Hanukkah was the only time of year other than Rosh Hashanah that I recall my mom making challah. Challah is more of a Sabbath than a Hanukkah thing, of course. I’m not trying to draw universal Holiday-themed Jewish paper doll coloring pages. I’m trying to draw ones that reflect, to some degree, my childhood memories of this Jewish holiday- Hanukkah.
But I heard from other people that jelly donuts are a Hannukah thing for a lot of families. So, I did my best to draw a plate of Sufganiyot, a type of jelly donut. I confess I have never had them and I have no idea if they are recognizable, but I hope so!
I added some mugs, because well, everyone likes hot chocolate or coffee or tea or something hot.
By the way, my favorite challah recipe this is one from Smitten Kitchen. I do not have a favorite jelly donut recipe, because I’ve never made them. Frying things scares me! But cooking stuff in oil is 100% a Hanukkah tradition.
Tomorrow the Hanukkah paper dolls will wrap up. Plus I’ll also share a single download of all 8 pages, which will be easier to print.
BTW: I’ve stuck with the spelling Hanukkah for the holiday, but you can also spell it Chanukah, or several other ways. Hebrew doesn’t transliterate into English very well. The first letter of the word Hanukkah is the eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet- chet/het – which is pronounced sort of like the “ch” in loch. It’s a guttural sound. Anyway, this is why there’s a lot of different spellings of Hanukkah. None of them are wrong. I just had to chose one, so I chose the one I was seeing the most of.
Hanukkah Paper Dolls: The Sixth Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
Happy Night six of Hanukkah!
I feel like all dolls need nightgowns, don’t you? I think they’re such a critical part of a paper doll’s wardrobe. Other than that, there’s nothing really Hanukkah related in today’s post, except the menorah. I think I’ll save talking about those until the end of the holiday. I have a plan for that.
Anyway, there’s not a lot to say about this set, so here are some nightgowns for the Hanukkah paper dolls and I hope everyone is still having a warm and wonderful December.
Hannukah Paper Dolls: The Fifth Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
And on the fifth night of Hanukkah, we have gelt and party dresses which seem like they should be part of any Hanukkah themed paper doll.
So, you might recall that last night, I talked about gifts. Well, gifts are very much a USA thing. In a lot of world and for a long time, money was traditionally given to the children during Hanukkah- usually in the form of coins. I still remember getting a silver dollar on Hanukkah more than one year. Those coins are called gelt, a Yiddish word for money.
Today, that money is usually chocolate coins, but still fun. Maybe more fun, because who really wants a handful of quarters? I try to buy gelt when I see it in stores.
Both of these party dresses were inspired by dresses from the 1830s. This dress to be specific. I love the fashion from the 1830s. It’s such a very not restrained period in women’s clothing.
Hanukkah Paper Dolls: The Fourth Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
It’s the fourth night of Hanukkah, so that seems an appropriate time to finally talk about latkes. I’ll openly confess that drawing latkes is not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. But I couldn’t imagine drawing paper dolls and not including a frying pan with latkes in it, plus aprons because they do splatter a lot when cooking.
A latke is a potato fritter from Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine that is traditionally prepared to celebrate Hanukkah. I grew up eating latkes. Jewish traditions are not monolithic, so there are lots of different foods. The one thing that is similar to almost all Hanukkah foods is that they are usually cooked in oil, because the original miracle involved oil.
I don’t know or have enough experience with Sephardim or Mizrahim foods to speak about them at all (or attempt to draw them), but I do like latkes. Some people eat them with apple sauce, but I’ve always been more of a sour cream person.
Here’s a recipe for latkes which is super close to my recipe, especially the part about adding the potato starch back into the mixture to help it crisp.
And that’s all for night four of our Hanukkah paper doll.
Hanukkah Paper Dolls: The Third Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
I was heavily inspired by folk art when I was designing these Hanukkah paper dolls. I love traditional folk art designs. I always have. There’s still a lot of Russian and Ukrainian cultural influence in Alaska, so I got exposed to to Khokhloma painting at a young age and never really stopped loving it. So, that was what I was thinking of when I was designing the motifs on the trimming of these dresses.
One of the things I wanted for this whole paper doll series was for it to feel old fashioned without feeling like it came from any specific period of history.
One of the Hanukkah traditions I haven’t mentioned yet is giving gifts. This wasn’t originally part of Hanukkah, but in the USA, thanks to the proximity to Christmas, gift giving has become a big part of the tradition for many families. In my family, we usually piled up the gifts on the mantle by the fireplace and each person got to pick out one gift from the pile per night until the last night when all remaining gifts were opened.
I remember as a child thinking Hanukkah was much cooler than Christmas, because we got gifts for 8 nights!
This seemed a much better deal to me as a 2nd grader.
Hanukkah Paper dolls: The Second Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
Happy second night of Hanukkah!
My niece is getting really into coloring, so I made these paper dolls a Hanukkah coloring page style thing. (Very precise language there.) I also wanted them to be easy to cut out and not too detailed, but still have enough detail to be fun to color. I hope I got that balance right.
Today, our paper dolls each get a dress and have a dreidel to play with. The dreidel is a four sided top which you use to play a gambling game that is entirely luck and which inevitably ends up with someone crying. I was always told that the Seleucid King outlawed studying the torah, so Jewish scholars would pretend to be playing a gambling game to cover for the fact that they were gathered to read and study torah.
I’m pretty darn certain this is not true, but dreidels were an important part of Hanukkah for my family. Besides, what fun are the holidays if there isn’t some drama about something minor? And the game of dreidel always seems to bring that.
Need some dolls to wear these dresses? Get them from the first post.
Hanukkah Paper Dolls: The First Night
Download Black and White PDF | The Other Days of the Hanukkah Series
For those of you who don’t know, Hanukkah is the celebration of a historical military battle and the re-dedication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabees led a rebellion and forced the Seleucid’s (Syrian-Greeks) out of the city. when it came time to rededicate the Second Temple, which had been defiled by order of the Seleucid King, there was a problem. Very little holy oil remained to light the menorah (candelabrum) in the Temple. The menorah was supposed never go out, but there was only enough oil to burn for one day. It would take eight days to make more oil.
According to the Talmud (written about 600 years after these events, so this might be legend), the oil burned for the whole week that was needed to make more oil. This is the miracle that Hanukkah celebrates.
My Jewish holiday paper dolls are very dear to me, because I didn’t have these sorts of paper dolls when I was a child. Given the current rise in antisemitism, it seemed especially important to create Hanukkah paper dolls this year.
So, the plan is that there are two dolls today and then I’ll do clothing for the next few posts, along with some Hanukkah accessories including latkes and a dreidel. I might try to draw gelt, but I’m not sure how to do that… I digress. The paper dolls are inspired by rag dolls. In my head, the smaller doll is the doll of the larger doll, but you can have your own ideas on that one.
One the last night, the 14th, I’ll post a PDF with all 8 pages for easy printing.