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A Stylish Paper Doll July: A Little Rainbow Weather Theme
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Like yesterday’s paper doll, today’s paper doll was inspired by some doodles I did of different “themes” for dolls. Once I started really thinking about this project as a project lasting 31 days (oh my) I thought to myself- Self, you need some dolls.
So, I came up with a few themes I liked- strawberries (originally cherries, but strawberries seemed more fun once I started drawing), rainbows and clouds, florals and geometrics. I managed to carve out some time over the weekend to get all of them done and ready, except the geometric one. That one is still in progress.
Today is weather themed and tomorrow will be flowers.
As always, I find it much easier when I batch my work. I tend to work on several things at once.
A Whimsical Winter Paper Doll to Print
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In my world, it is still way below zero and the snow is still deep. People tell me spring will come, but I am beginning to have my doubts. I’m antsy and super tired of winter. Up here, some people call this feeling the “heebie-jeebies” – that antsy icky anxiety that comes from wanting winter to end. This time of the year time seems to blur together. There’s not enough day light yet and there’s not enough changes in the weather. You start wonder- will Winter ever end?
Different people deal in different ways. I deal by being deeply and intensely attracted to all things cheerful and whimsical. I want hats that look like pandas and pink shoes. So, I designed this paper doll set to capture the whimsy of winter- the things I seem to crave as the dark and cold feels like it will never end.
Other coping strategies this time of the year for me include covering my planner in flower stickers and sticking unicorn washi tape all over my journal . What do you do to deal with long winters? Or do you live in a place where spring is already on the way? I’m only a little jealous.
By the way, I have restarted my newsletter for 2022 quietly. If you haven’t signed up, you can do that here- Newsletter Sign Up. It usually goes out about every two weeks and there’s a paper doll coloring page in every issue.
If you’d like to support PTP in a more direct way (plus get extra paper dolls very month and access to a backlog of wonderful things as well) you can sign up to be a patron on Patreon. It was a slow start to 2022, so you haven’t missed anything new there.
A Valentine’s Day Paper Doll For 2021
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Valentine’s Day is a holiday I always try to make a paper doll for, because of my grandmother who often sent Valentine’s Day cards with paper dolls in them to me and my sister. This paper doll has a small colorful mix and match wardrobe with some retro dresses and slip on shoes. Don’t forget to cut between the dolls shoulders and her hair, so the tabs fit better.
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A Pair of Halloween Paper Dolls! One Bee & One Fairy
I’m not super into scary Halloween stuff. I like the occasional well written ghost story and will watch horror movies if my best friend watches them first, provides me a summary, and warns me if I can handle it. Then I watch them at noon with the lights on and quickly watch something like the Great British Baking Show afterwards to keep myself from feeling to scared.
Yes, I am pathetic in this regard.
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So, to do with the Ghost and Frankenstein’s monster of last week I wanted to end October with another set of Halloween inspired paper dolls. Sometimes, when I draw Halloween paper dolls they are clearly a person with costumes and other times they are meant to be the actual creatures.
This set I think falls somewhere in the middle. Ruby could be fairy or she could be a person in a wig with an ear prosthetic. Sapphire is probably not a bee (clearly), but she could be somehow. I’ll need to think more on that one. I paid the bee with the fair, because I knew I could draw one set of wings for them to share.
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For this set, I stuck with a pretty narrow color scheme, as I wanted the wings and other pieces to be somewhat interchangeable between the two dolls. I’ve always felt like paper dolls are best when they have more options.
I hope everyone has an amazing Halloween, but, most of all a safe one.
If you want even more paper dolls with costumes, I just finished doing a bunch of Masquerade dresses for my 5 dollar patrons. Join us over on Patreon to see those and get more paper dolls each week.
1890s Paper Doll to Print with Lapis
My favorite thing about the decade of the 1890s is that short period in the middle of the decade when sleeves become truly absurdly huge. I mean, like sleeves the size of your head. It’s utterly charming and impractical and I love it. So, if I am going to draw an 1890s fashion paper doll, she is going to be the middle of the era.
By the 1890s, there’s a bunch of fashion magazines being published by home sewing pattern companies. The sewing machine has made this a super lucrative field. So, most of these pieces come from the Delineator Magazine which was published by the Butterick Company. One of the reasons I like the Delineator is that their fashion plates were all available for sale as patterns. So they aren’t a dress someone imagines, but one you know people could have actually made.
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The 1890s underwear is a combination with a corset over it. Combinations were a “combination” of pantaloons and a chemise. They went under corsets while on top of them a woman might wear a corset cover and slip or a slip that combined those two garments. V&A has a nice photo.
Lapis, our 1890s fashion paper doll, has two outfits. The first is an At Home Costume based on an illustration from 1896. You can see it on this page of the Delineator. In the 1800s, there’s also a lot of interesting things going on with women’s sporting clothing. Bicycles were super popular in the 1890s thanks to the new “safety bicycle”. There’s many different styles of women’s bicycle clothing from this period, but I chose a Turkish trousers ensemble which comes from the Delineator Magazine in 1894.
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Colors are actually pretty vivid in the 1890s. Thanks to chemical dyes, there’s a lot of richness. I was really struck as I poured through museum collections at the number of dark colored corsets I saw. While bright purple seems sort of scandalous, jewel tone corsets really do seem to be a thing from the decade like this purple one and this pink one.
Her At Home Costume I did in pinks and corals. The bicycle outfit I thought would be more practical in blues and browns. After all, it wouldn’t make sense in a world where laundry isn’t easy to be biking around in white or pale blue. I’m sure people did, but I mostly saw brown and blue in my examples.
Anyway, I had fun with this paper doll and I hope others enjoy her as well. If you have a few hours to kill, pouring through Delineator Magazine really is neat. I also want to thank my Patrons, because I don’t think I would have drawn this era if it hadn’t won a poll. I had a lot of fun doing it.
Paper Dolls in Masks! (A Pandemic Paper Doll Extra)
I have been really debating what to do about the pandemic. On one hand, I am not in anyway qualified to give anyone medical advice. (I’m qualified to maybe give archives/library/paper doll advice.) On the other hand, I wanted to respond to the current crisis somehow. It felt weird to pretend it wasn’t happening out in the outside world beyond my small isolated corner of it.
So, I decided to respond in paper doll fashion, plus I figure people need kids activity ideas right now. You need to occupy children at home and while I don’t have kids, I have a lot of empathy for folks who do.
So, behold- paper dolls in face masks!
Sapphire, Ruby and Pearl With Face Masks
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When Alaska mandated facemasks a few weeks ago, I pulled out my trusty fabric stash and sewed up a few for me, my partner and some friends who didn’t sew. I’ll openly confess I’m not a great seamstress and mostly I work in doll clothing creation, but the mask pattern was easy enough. I used the New York Times pattern for the pleated mask. Now the mandate is lifted, but I still wear my mask when grocery shopping, as the CDC recommends.
Originally, I had planned to make the face masks for the paper dolls removable, but my prototypes did not work. So, instead, they are permanently attached to each doll. I thought about doing extra heads- the way Dolly Dingle sometimes does- but frankly that kind freaks me out. Paper doll decapitation feels weird for a kids activity idea.
Opal, Amethyst and Lapis With Face Masks
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I’ve done all the Jewels and Gemstones paper dolls here, so each page has three dolls and there are 9 dolls in total- Sapphire, Ruby, Pearl, Diamond, Opal, Topaz, Amethyst, Lapis, and Jade. I try not to have favorites, but I really like how Opal’s bangs came out in this set.
I also wanted to do a variety of mask styles. None of these are N-95, but rather the sorts of masks you might wear to the store. There seem to be two major styles- the curved one and the pleated one. I have a pleated mask, but I have seem lots of patterns for curved masks and those seem more popular among the folks I see during my rare grocery forays.
Topaz, Diamond and Jade with Face Masks
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These cute girls can wear any of the Jewels and Gemstones 2.0 clothing, so they can dress up as princesses, evening gowns or to go fishing. They can wear any of the Jewels and Gemstones 1.0 clothing by printing those outfits at 80%. There’s dozens of different outfit options at the moment.
I think my favorite mask might be Topaz’s one all covered in abstract roses/flowers/swirls. Do you have a favorite?
Everyone stay safe out there.
Princess Opal: Paper Dolls and Dresses
In my head, not always a logical space, I tend to organize princess paper dolls and dresses into categories. There are the medieval looks, the renaissance looks and then these- big skirted looks. If anything, I suppose a nod to the 1860s and 1700s, but really… not much when you come down to it. I have a whole Pinterest Board I keep devoted to these big skirted dresses.
There are two dresses here today- a Spring dress and a Winter dress. Clearly, I’ve been influenced by the current weather in Alaska, which is finally spring! It’s so beautiful. Most of the snow is gone and there’s grass. It’s not green, yet, but it will be.
Also, there’s a lot of birch pollen and my allergies are going nuts. I digress. Let’s get back to paper dolls and dresses.
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To keep all these gowns feeling consistent, I kept the same color scheme. That makes all the gowns feel like they go together and come from the same sort of universe. A universe where people don’t have to go through doorways often.
Eventually, I will resize the rest Jewels and Gemstones 1.0 Princess Trousseau and pair those with their own princess with absurd hair. After that, there can be a whole collection of paper dolls and dresses with big skirts and fancy hair. All of them will qualify as impractical self-isolation costumes, let me tell you.
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A few final thoughts- the current landscape up here inspired the colors of the Spring Dress- yellows and oranges with just a few hints of early spring green. The accessories here are books, because… well, everyone likes books don’t they? And I do tend to draw a lot of books for paper dolls.
I’m a librarian. What can you expect?
I hope everyone is staying safe and sane at the moment. Let me know what you think of today’s paper doll gowns in the comments. I love hearing from you all.
Spring Evening Gowns for Paper Dolls
I like starting paper doll series with evening gowns. I don’t 100% know why, but I think because they are fun to draw and everyone needs a few amazing evening gowns, don’t they?
Plus a lot of things I like draw are evening gown adjacent like fantasy dresses and evening gowns help me plot out how many pieces I can fit in a single paper doll page.
See… there is a method to my madness.
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These dresses are all based on designs from David’s Bridal and other online retailers. I could spend hours looking at fancy dresses that I have no reason to wear. My life is not that exciting.
Anyway, some of the inspirational dresses were this corset bodice and this one. Other dresses included this one shoulder gown and several other dresses like this one and this one.
I guess this paper doll could be subtitled: Rachel Spent Time on David’s Bridal Website while Social Distancing!
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And since it is spring, or so the calendar tells me, even if there’s 24 inches of snow on the ground outside, I wanted to focus on a color scheme that was spring colors- pastels mostly, but since I find a lot of pastels overly saccharine, these are pretty smoky.
I am excited by the fact that I can fit three pairs of shoes along the bottom of each paper doll sheet! This is a little thing, but I get joy out of small things.
I hope everyone is staying safe and doing okay in this strange time we’re all living in.
By the way, I am still sharing weekly extra Jewels and Gemstones outfits with my Patrons.
Ruby & Her Casual Shoes: A Curvy Blond Paper Doll
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Thoughts on Today’s Paper Doll
Sometimes, I have a lot to say about a paper doll set. Other times, not so much. This is falling into the not so much category, as are most of my posts this week. Sorry. I just don’t have that much to say about these paper dolls.
When it came to coloring today’s paper doll, I decided to go a little cliche and just do blue eyes and blond hair. Of course, there is a black and white version you can color anyway you like if you’d prefer a different combo.
Inspiration for Today’s Paper Doll
For Ruby, I chose to go very casual with her shoes. Mostly, because the other version of Ruby has such formal shoes. I figured she didn’t need another set of super formal shoes. Her hair was my attempt to practice drawing short hair. I love pixie cuts, but I don’t draw them much.
Specific Source Images: This hair & these sandals.
Learn/See More
On the Blog: More Jewels & Gemstones Paper Dolls and my formal version of Ruby from January.
Around the Internet:All my hair sources tend to come from my Hair Pinterest Board. I do also use hairstyle magazines as well.
Last Thoughts
Totally unrelated to paper dolls, but I’ve been binge watching Umbrella Academy on Netflix. I have two episodes left. It’s so fun! I find the exploration of how messed up having super powers would probably make you super interesting even if some of the content is a bit cliche.
Also, if you love the blog and want more paper doll content there’s Patreon. You get extra paper doll content and fun perks like polls and things.