brunette Archives • Page 6 of 9 • Paper Thin Personas

Victorian Ballerina Printable Paper Doll from the 1880s

December 6, 2020August 25, 2014

Oh man, what to say about the last few days…

Well, I have been working on backend server CPU issues with my shared hosting service. Nothing really serious, but stuff that has to be dealt with for the blog hosting to continue to be cheap enough for me to justify continuing to keeping it online and free.

Still, I owed a paper doll to my last drawing winner, Lina of Lina’s Historical Paper Dolls, and I was not about to put off finishing that for another week, because I would keep feeling guilty about it.

Lina requested an 1880s period Marisole Monday & Freinds paper doll with a ballet outfit and several other dresses. I had some trouble getting all the pieces to fit on a single page, so I omitted some shoes from the image.

Should you want proper shoes to go with this set, then I recommend checking out On the Board Walk in color or black and white or Mia Goes to the Bathing Place in color or black and white. Both of those sets both have button up style boots which, while not period, are close enough to not look totally awkward.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print}Lina was kind enough to send me reference photos and specific colors for the hair, skin and eyes of the paper doll, but left the color scheme mostly up to me. I wanted to use some rich colors, because by the 1880s chemical dyes were common and rich colors were very much instyle. There is a habit to think of the 19th century as sepia colored, because of sepia photos, but it was actually a rather garish era.

At least post, chemical dyes being invented.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}So, Lina also asked for a tutu based on this painting by Degas. The painting dates from 1871, a little earlier than the other costumes in the set. I omitted the sash, since I based the dress on the center figure. I don’t think the layers of the skirts really look like tulle, which bothers me. Liana has some great tulle on her blog.

The ballgown was based on this fashion plate. The gown was red, but I made it peacock blue based on a description in English Women’s Clothing in the 19th Century by Wilett-Cunnington that mentioned peacock blue ballgowns. I hate drawing lace, but it came out all right, I suppose.

The last two outfits are a swimming costume and a house dress. Old swimming costumes were extremely complicated and not very easy to swim in. Generally, I think of them as wadding costumes. Lina sent me this picture and I based it off that.

The house dress is classic 1880s style with bustle, drawn up skirt and long pleats. It’s a pretty typical gown for its period. Lina sent me this photo and I based the dress off of it. I omitted the pattern on the dress, because I knew it would reproduce poorly in the small scale of the paper doll set.

And that, as they say, is that.

If you haven’t ever checked out Lina’s blog, Lina’s Historical Paper Dolls than I recommend taking the time to do so. She makes wonderfully interesting historical paper dolls.

Hello Natalie! A New Printable Paper Doll

May 22, 2020July 31, 2014

Okay, so years ago there was this show called Forever Knight which I confess I loved when I was in middle school and high school, as it was shown on Sci-fi as reruns. In fact, in graduate school when I found out the library had the whole series of DVD (okay.. so that library had some weird DVD options… they also had all the seasons of Law and Order) I openly confess to re-watching all the adventures of the vampire cop.

So, when I created a brunette paper doll with curls, I had to name her after Natalie Lambert played by Cathrine Disher who was the coroner best friend of the vampire cop. I still don’t know how the show ever got made, since it is such an absurd premise to begin with- Vampires Fighting Crime! Still, there’s a lot of other stupid TV shows that made it, and Forever Knight at least didn’t fall into the trap of having every show end with a happily ever after.

Truth be told, I watch very little contemporary TV, except home decorating shows. I do keep meaning to finish the first season of Orange is the New Black.

{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 Clothes for Her}{Click Here for Friends for Her}

So.. confession… her eyes kinda bug me…. But despite that, I do like how she came out.

I was going to make her blond and she was blond for a while, but I noticed that I have a lot of blond printable paper dolls here. It’s one of my pet peeves that in sets of doll with lots of skin colors, the white doll always seems to be a blond or a redhead. I do the same thing a lot, because after a while brown hair gets boring and it’s not like I can apply red hair to a brown skinned doll and call it natural (though red highlights to appear naturally in some dark haired people). Anyway, this is a long involved way of saying that today’s paper doll is a brunette, though in the future there maybe more paper dolls with the same skin color and other hair colors.

And that’s all for today. I do want to know though… Has anyone else ever watched Forever Knight or am I the only one?

A Printable Knight Paper Doll Named Rebecca Grace

May 22, 2020July 16, 2014

A while ago I drove to Atlanta to get on a plane to fly to Seattle to celebrate my Grandmother’s 90th birthday. It was a great trip, but as anyone who has ever had to leave a car at the Atlanta airport knows, it can be really expensive. Fortunately, a good friend of my boyfriend was kind enough to let us leave my car in her driveway while we took two weeks and headed back to my frozen northland home aka Alaska.

While we were waiting for our flight, one of her daughters informed me that she wanted to be a knight. We had a lovely conversation about knights and I decided that clearly she needed a knight paper doll. So, today I am pleased to present a noble knight paper doll for Rebecca Grace.

{Download a PDF to Print and Color} {Download a PNG to Print and Color} {More Pixie & Puck Printable Paper Dolls}

When I am designing a paper doll and thinking about children (rather than just thinking about what I think is cool) than I try to make the pieces fairly large and easy to manipulate. I also wanted to make the underwear a little more covering, but I didn’t want to make the paper doll unable to wear other clothing from the Pixie paper dolls. After all, someday she might want to be a paper doll astronaut or a paper doll pirate or a paper doll vampire.

{Download a PDF to Print in Color} {Download a PNG to Print in Color} {More Pixie & Puck Printable Paper Dolls}

The truth is that I had a lot of fun drawing these armor sets and while I still don’t feel like I know a lot about armor, I do feel that every child should be encouraged to play out whatever roles they want. In a world where young girls are encouraged to be princesses and when many dolls and toys offer little more than “fashion” as a reason for existence, a few more knights might not be a bad thing. Knights have a fair bit of agency, but princesses tend to simply get saved.

Viola, A Paper Doll to Print from the 1890s

May 22, 2020July 3, 2014

We’re traveling to the turn of the century today for Viola, a printable paper doll with her wardrobe from 1895 and 1900. She can be printed in black and white or in full color. Viola’s name was selected from the Social Security Baby Name Index as popular in the 1890s. Fashion in the mid to late 1890’s exists between huge puffed sleeves and the rather horrid pigeon breasted look. Not being a fan of either style, I never thought I would do 1890s paper doll, but I found I liked the fashions at the end of the century, so here she is.

Honestly, the way I look at history has been heavily influenced by the historical paper dolls I had as a child, sparking my interest in social history and fashion history. So, I think historical paper dolls are great printable paper dolls for kids and I’ve only recently discovered that a number of people who use my paper dolls for home schooling activities. All of this increases the pressure to get the paper doll “right”, lest some child’s understanding of 1890’s dress be damaged by my paper doll creation. (Not that I think this would be devastating for the child in question- there are far worse things in this world.)

{Download a PDF to Print and Color of the Paper Doll} {Download a PNG to Print and Color of the Paper Doll}

{Download a PDF to Print and Color of the Paper Doll’s Clothes} {Download a PNG to Print and Color of the Paper Doll’s Clothes} {Click Here for More Pixie and Puck Printable Paper Dolls}

The mid to late 1890s wardrobe that Viola has is based on museum objects, primarily, and a few costume plates. The Met, The Museum at FIT and MFA Boston, as well as the UK National Trust were a few of my sources. When I am researching a new paper doll, I tend to collect my sources on my Pinterest boards (feel free to follow) and today’s printable paper doll is no exception. I gathered her clothing sources on my Turn of the Century board, before I started drawing.

{Download a PDF to Print in Color of the Paper Doll} {Download a PNG to Print in Color of the Paper Doll}

{Download a PDF to Print in Color of the Paper Doll’s Clothes} {Download a PNG to Print in Color of the Paper Doll’s Clothes} {Click Here for More Pixie and Puck Printable Paper Dolls}

The Sources, Left to Right: The pair of shoes from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1898. Her corset was an amalgamation of several corsets which you can see on my Turn of the Century pinterest board, however, this corset from 1900 and another corset from 1900 were big influences. I chickened out of making the corset patterned, a fact I regret.

One of her parasols was based on this one, but the other I rather invented based on a lot of various parasols I looked at. The Met actually has a really large collection of parasols, who knew?

Her seaside or yachting costume was inspired by this dress from 1895. There seems to have been a real “sailor” trend in the end of the Victorian period during the bridge into Edwardian.

A visiting or afternoon dress based on a gown from the National Trust Collections of the UK.

The carriage toilette in green is from this fashion plate I found on flickr, though I confess to usually trying to avoid finding things on flickr, since I don’t always trust the accuracy of the sources.

Her gym suit is based on this French one with the shoes borrowed from this gymsuit from 1893-1898.

The ballgown comes from a design by The House of Doucet circa 1898-1900.

Were I to draw today’s historical paper doll again, I would have included a pair of gloves and another pair of shoes, but that would have made her three pages and I wasn’t about to that. Of course, should you wish to add gloves, than I will direct your attention to the Regency Pixie Paper Dolls whose gloves could certainly be adapted here.

Fairytales Flock: Robin as Steampunk Cinderella

May 22, 2020March 21, 2014

Wow, it’s been a while since I posted one of these paper dolls, hasn’t it? My last set was East of the Sun, West of the Moon which I was quite proud of. I took a little break from the Flock dolls and now I’ve returned with a Cinderella set. To be honest, my return was partly inspired by Paper Doll School’s fairytale paper dolls and by the Toy Box Philosopher’s wonderful reviews of the Ever After High dolls that Mattel is making (though they include characters that are not fairytale characters… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is NOT a fairytale…)

Anyway, for my Cinderella, I decided to stick to the Grimm version of the tale where Cinderella is a little more proactive. The Grimm version of the tale includes three balls, no pumpkin, lots of birds and eventually people cutting off parts of their feet (ewww). Actually, like a lot of Grimm tales it is a pretty… well… Grimm tale.

One of the challenges of all the fairytale Flock sets is trying to figure out which parts of the tale make logical symbols for the paper doll set. For Cinderella, I chose to use birds and clocks as my two thematic elements, since both play a major role in the tale of Cinderella.

**Fairytale Flock: Robin as Cinderella**

Robin as Cinderella Doll PDF Download	Cinderella’s Clothing PDF Download

Sewing the Seventies… A Printable Paper Doll For Jo

December 6, 2020February 3, 2014

This is the paper doll set I abandoned last week and instead posted the doodles. I am so happy I gave it another week to be refined. Jo was one of the two winners of my drawing in January. She asked for a “groovy” late 60s early 1970s Marisole paper doll based on pattern covers from patterns she actually had sewn at the time. How cool is that?

You can see a PDF of the pattern covers Jo sent me here. I loved all of the pattern covers and I wish I had been able to draw them all, but, of course, that would be way more than a one page paper doll.

Normally, I do two pairs of shoes for each Marisole and friends set, but I wanted to focus on things the patterns had, so a simple pair of clogs did the trick. Tiny calico patterns were the “in” thing in the 70’s, so I created some to decorate these groovy outfits using a new method that I’m experimenting with involving Photoshops pattern making tools. I think they came out pretty well considering that I only sort of know what I am doing.

{Click Here for a PDF of Sewing the Seventies in Color} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Sewing the Seventies in Color}I drew a new Marisole paper doll face for this set, because I wanted to try to capture some of the whimsy of the pattern cover’s faces. I don’t think I did a good job of that, but I did have fun. Jo asked for bangs and brown hair, or I would have given into the temptation and tried to do Farrah hair.

(Okay, I did try. I confess. It came out… weird looking.)

{Click Here for a PDF of Sewing the Seventies in Black and White} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Sewing the Seventies in Black and White} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Paper Dolls}I had so much fun dabbling in the 1970s, especially since I’m not very familiar with the clothes of this era. So, fans who remember the 1970s… how did I do?

Puck Magnetic Paper Dolls for the Boys

May 21, 2020December 10, 2013

I have a lot of readers who love my magnetic paper dolls (which is understandable, I love them too) and I often get asked about a boy paper doll for the boys out there who might want to play some dress up too.

I don’t have a lot of male paper dolls on this blog (because I don’t find them as interesting as girl paper dolls) and I’ve only done about fifteen Puck paper dolls over the years. The result is that I don’t have a lot of “stock” to pull from when creating a magnetic version. After some debate about what to include, I decided for my first Puck magnetic set (posted early enough for people to print them for the holidays), I would include three boys and some contemporary clothing choices.

The magnetic paper dolls have three sets of shoes, five tops, five bottoms and a few different accessories. All of the pieces can be used interchangeably amongst the three boys, meaning that there’s a lot of fun mix and match outfit options (about 75 different outfits to be exact).

It’s not as exciting as some of my other sets, I confess, but I think they’re very versatile. Since I haven’t done that many Puck paper dolls, it was a little challenging to put together a set for magnetic printing, but I hope this serves some of the readers I have with boys.

Puck Magnetic Paper Dolls Set Number One

{Click Here for a PDF to Print}

Zippers, Ruffles and a New Paper Friend

December 6, 2020December 9, 2013

Today, we have our printable paper doll showing off her slightly girly wardrobe of ruffles in purples and pinks. As you may recall, last week this printable paper doll was in black and white for coloring.

For those of you who play Shadowrun, the little iphone looking device she wears strapped to her arm is her commlink (she’s a technomancer, so she mostly wears one for show) and the glasses are her AR vision glasses. You may need to extend the tabs and paste them together to slip them over her head. For those of you who don’t play Shadowrun, then she’s just a chick with some crazy glasses, a teddy bear and some really ruffled skirts that she likes to wear.

On the left, you can see some of the outfit options. There are actually fifty-two outfit combinations here. (I’ve posted before about how to do paper doll clothing combination math) since everything is mix and matchable. I think there are actually a few more since two of the tops can be worn either over the tanks, as I tend to imagine them, or as separate pieces. If you include the two sweaters as layer pieces than you have 76 outfit options. Not bad for a wardrobe of 13 clothing pieces, not including the gloves or the glasses or the commlink.

Also, apparently I’m not the only one whose ever been possessed to make paper dolls out of Shadowrun races. Personally, I think they’re wonderful paper dolls, but not really my style. My style is much more girly.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for More Marisole Monday & Friends Printable Paper Dolls}Thoughts? Comments? Things you’d like to tell me? Drop me a comment.

Denise… Pixie and Puck Paper Doll in Floral’s and Pleats

January 31, 2016November 8, 2013

So, this feels a little bit summery to be going up on this fall day, but I had so much fun with the color scheme that I shall not be denied. Even if it’s cool and crisp and the leaves have already begun to turn their beautiful yellow and red colors.

It’s apple pie and cinnamon weather these days, and I am utterly enjoying it.

But Denise is clearly living in a warmer world with her freckles and her florals. I’ve discovered an unexpected love of abstract florals which used on Denise. I think her pleated skirts look fun with the floral designs decorating them. The blouses are all meant to match with the different skirts.

{Download a PDF to Print and Color} {Download a PNG to Print and Color}

I tend to think of Denise as being friends with my old printable paper dolls Constance and Prudence, there is something similarly vintage about her style and sensibility.

{Download a PDF to Print in Color} {Download a PNG to Print in Color} {Click Here for More Pixie and Puck Printable Paper Dolls}

Here’s an amazing fact… today’s printable paper dolls is number fifty in all of my Pixie paper dolls. I feel like I should do something to celebrate, but I don’t know what. Ideas from the audience? Comment below.

Marisole Monday & Friends: Mia with Seagulls and Seaside In Color

January 25, 2016August 19, 2013

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

The colors on this Mia paper doll set were inspired by the Pantone 2013 Spring color report and by signal flags for nautical ships. When I was a kid, I remember my father was practicing for his captains license from the US coast guard and I would quiz him on signal flags. It was also the first time I ever heard Morse code in person.

Remarkable stuff, Morse code.

Anyway, I’m rather pleased with how the color scheme came out. Mia will be quite stylish at the yacht club in this set of costumes. I have complete faith in her sense of decorum and style.

So, normally I have no problem coming up with ideas, but lately, I’ve been feeling a little stumped on the Marisole paper doll front. So, I am open to suggestions. Anyone got something they desperately want to see?

I’ve recently had requests for cowgirls, ballerinas (probably not going to happen since tutus sort of freak me out), saris, swimsuits and opera (though I confess I don’t know a THING about opera).

Marisole Monday: Coastal Princess in Coastal Colors

January 25, 2016May 6, 2013

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a PNG to Print} {Click Here for the rest of this series}

So, my original idea was to make today’s paper doll a little bit latino looking with a darker skin tone than I’ve done with a Margot paper doll before, but I think she rather turned out just looking like she got a bit of a tan. So, next time I’ll rethink the color choice. Skin tones are hard, as I think I’ve mentioned many many times before. Personally, I really like the dark blue dress the best. I think it came out just like I wanted it to.

Stumbled across a new tumblr today, called Paper Doll Central. Beautiful work. Makes me wish I still was trying to keep up with my tumblr. Lots of nice paper dolls there worth checking out if you have a few minutes and want to indulge.

I mentioned last week I was inspired by the Mediterranean ocean when I colored this paper doll. I was also inspired by the idea of not using any pinks or reds, just clean clear cool colors. I imagine Margot walking on the beach, wind whipping through her skirts while she watches ships on the ocean. Then, possibly, being attacked by giant crabmen from the planet Neptune.

Maybe I should have drawn her a sword.

Pixie & Puck: Philippa… Named for a Queen

October 21, 2019April 17, 2013

Another fantasy Medieval sort of Pixie Paper Doll for the this week. I have been on this fantasy Pixie kick for a while… I have one more of a similar style to post and then I shall have finished my flight of fancy in this direction until I get distracted and decide to turn to something else.

{Click Here for a PDF of Phillipa in Color} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Phillipa in Color} {Click Here for More Pixie Paper Dolls}

She is named for Philippa of Hainault who was the Queen consort of King Edward III of England in the 14th century. Philippa of Hainault is buried in Westminster Cathedral, so you can go visit her there should you be in London and feel like it. Westminster is pretty darn cool, I have to confess.

{Click Here for a PDF of Phillipa in Black and White} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG of Phillipa in Black and White} {Click Here for More Pixie Paper Dolls}

So, the response to the new lips on the Pixies has been uniformly negative. I tend to agree with the concerns leveled by my readers and therefore won’t be continuing in the style after this paper doll set.