contemporary

Happy Halloween! Printable Paper Doll Fun!

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Every year, I try to do something Halloween themed. Valentine’s Day and Halloween are, I think, my most consistent paper doll pieces. I like the colors and I like corsets and Halloween seems like a corset heavy holiday.

Her hair is supposed to have a widows peak and I wanted a sort of elegant feeling with these. Some of it is recycled, but I am 100% okay with that. It gave me a place to start. With this set, I had a lot of fun designing patterns. There’s a cute little ghost dresses, pumpkins, and skulls.

I think some fun could be had coloring these as a Halloween party activity. My grandmother used to send us Halloween greeting cards that were often paper dolls and I like to imagine someone sending this to kids or printing it out for them.

My niece is still too young for me to really be sending her paper dolls, but soon… soon.

Meanwhile, stay safe this Halloween and then enjoy!

Cottagecore Fashions with Opal

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DDJ: Sweet Summer Scallops with Dusk

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While all of my paper dolls have themes, I think my contemporary fashion paper dolls have themes that are sometimes more subtle or more defined by color than anything else. After all, there’s only so many ways a person can draw a pair of blue jeans. This set was inspired by summer florals and a pair of polka-dot jeans my sister used to own. In my head, I was thinking feminine silhouettes (hence the flutter, tulip and puffed sleeves) and scallops. I included the long denim skirt, because I feel like 1990s fashions are having a revival and long denim skirts feel so 1990s to me.

I wanted to keep the colors soft and pastel without feeling too… childish. I think pastels can go nursery room really fast. For those keeping count at home, this is my 7th Dolls Du Jour paper doll and my second one with Dusk. The last one was this very fancy evening gown set.

There’s also a new paper doll set up on Etsy if you’d like to go check that one out. It’s a three doll set with five pages of fantasy clothing. I imagine it would be super fun to color.

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DDJ: Color Blocking with Twilight

A black and white paper doll with a mix and match wardrobe of 8 clothing pieces.

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A black paper doll with a mix and match wardrobe of 8 clothing pieces.

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Color blocking is one of my favorite fashion themes. I just love how it lets me play with different colors and experiment with how different lines look on a set of garments. I first drew this paper doll set last year, but didn’t manage to actually get it done until a few weeks ago. Sometimes, I am a little slow on finishing up my own artwork.

Let’s not talk about the large number of 80% finished projects lurking on my hard-drive.

By the way, this is only my 6th Dolls Du Jour paper doll. I created this series in May of 2020 as part of my move towards drawing more diverse figures. Figure drawing is my least favorite part of paper doll making and it is the part I think I am worse at. There’s dozens of abandoned attempts at figure drawing in my notebooks. I still don’t think my figures are as diverse as they could be, but I also can only bang my head against the things I don’t like doing so long.

Just let me draw silly shoes and ignore when my people look off, which they often do.

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Summer Crop Tops with Jade

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I am fascinated by the return of crop tops in fashion these days. Unlike in my teenage years, they are now paired with high rise pants which I think is a much more flattering look than the low hip-huggers of the early 2000s. 

All the colors in this set are based on the Pantone 2021 Spring color scheme. 

You will need to cut along the dolls shoulders to fit these items on. I have put a dotted line there, but with the long dark hair it can be hard to see.  

Retro-Beach Summer Paper Doll with Ruby

One of the interesting things about switching over to Jewels and Gemstones 2.0 has been getting to gather up related pieces from other sets and make them into new sets. I had fun collecting some of the summery clothing I’d drawn over the last year and transforming it into a new set for Ruby, though any of the dolls can wear the clothing. To my patrons, I’m sure these pieces look familiar, but I don’t think most of them have shown up on the blog before.

So, that’s kinda fun.

Paper doll coloring sheet with mix and match wardrobe from paperthinpersonas.com

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I went through several color schemes with this set. Before I finally settled on one that I reminded me of a retro 1960s surf movie poster color scheme. Of course, I didn’t actually look at any retro surf movies for inspiration, but that was my concept. Ruby basically has my hair color here, because I don’t see that color in paper dolls much.

Brunette printable fashion paper doll dress up page with 8 mix and match clothing options.

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In other fun news, I’ve got a published magazine paper doll. If you go grab the current issue of Doll Castle News, you’ll find my paper doll dedicated to “Doll-O-Ween” (shout out to my partner Adam for the title) in there. She was inspired by both BJDs and vintage Ginny dolls. Drawing dolls and not having them come out creepy is super hard. My respect for Diana Vining’s art grew immensely in that project. You can also see some pics on my Instagram.

Anyway, I keep meaning to do a longer post with photos of my sketches and such. However, in case that doesn’t happen (and who knows if it will) I wanted to share.

As always, if you love the blog, want to support it, and want more paper dolls every week- join us on Patreon. This is a one woman show, so any level of support is super helpful to keeping things rolling around here.

The 1980s & Corset Tops: A 2020 Fashion Trend

One of the major trends of 2020 is polka-dots (and I did a paper doll celebrating that already) and then my other trend that I have been super interested in is the 1980s and the tendency as corset tops. Plus, I think when it comes to celebrating fashion, paper dolls are pretty much the perfect fashion paper craft. They allow us to not just explore trends, but kids can draw their own paper doll clothing.

Personally, I don’t really remember the 1980s, because I was both very young and living in Alaska. Alaska is not exactly trendy as a other parts of the country. We’re a little behind in fashion. Also, we all wear lots of rainboots, polar-fleece and puffer vests. Puffer vests might have trended last year, but we were wearing them long before they were trendy.

Anyway, the big trends in this paper doll are the 1980s styles, corsets, bra tops, and Bermuda shorts. The bra tops and corset tops seemed like similar ideas to collapse together. The suit jacket works with either the lose trousers or the skirt, but I colored it as though these were separates for more flexibility. You can, of course, color them any way you choose.

A fun fashion paper craft. A paper doll coloring page with her wardrobe of mix and match separates.

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Color wise, I wanted to use the Pantone 2020 palette called Snorkle. I’m not a huge fan of pantone’s color of the year– Classic Blue. It’s just kind of… boring? Can I admit that. I’m not against it, but it’s not super exciting to me. I guess given how 2020 has gone people are not super into exciting these days. Anyway, there’s also a trend for the return of some neon colors and the bright green was my nod to that trend.

A fun fashion paper craft. A paper doll printable with her wardrobe of mix and match separates.

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Among my favorite things about this version of Pearl is her hair. I’m always working to learn to draw hair better and I feel like this hair came out particularly nice. It’s a process, after all.

Are you into fashion trends? I confess I’m pretty boring in my clothing choices, but I do like drawing them for paper dolls. I try to stay at least aware of what’s happening in the world of trendy clothing.

Polka-Dots: Celebrating a 2020 Fashion Trend

I love reading the fashion magazines in March when they publish the big spring fashion reports. It’s probably my second favorite time to buy fashion magazines. September is my other favorite time. So, one of the things I look for in those magazines are the trends for inspiration when drawing paper dolls with clothes.

One of the trends of 2020 it polka-dots. I knew I wanted to draw some! I love polka-dots. They’re whimsical and playful which is the best way to create paper dolls. There should be something playful about them, don’t you think?

Paper dolls with clothes coloring page, featuring a black paper doll and her polka-dot inspired wardrobe.

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Each of the clothing items I drew for this paper doll was a bit girly-ruffles for sleeves, pleats and such. The grey and coral is a color combination I love and there’s something feminine about polka-dots. Hence the pinks and ruffles.

I also wanted to repeat the circular shape in the dolls hair and her purse. I thought the afro would be a fun match to the polka-dots. Plus, while I have drawn a fair number of black paper dolls, not very many of them have afros.

Paper dolls with clothes printable paper toy, featuring a black paper doll and her polka-dot inspired wardrobe.

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A few of my other favorite polka-dot paper dolls over the years include this fun red dress, these gothic leggings, some sandals with this paper doll and Dot, a paper doll from back in 2010.

If you want more original paper dolls, join us if you like on Patreon.

I also used polka-dots when I was showing how I put patterns on my paper doll clothes. So, if you’re wondering how this paper doll with clothes got her polka-dots, read this tutorial. I still use this method.

What do you think of polka-dots? Are you a fan? I confess I love them, but I rarely wear them.

By the way, you might notice there’s some new layout things around here. I’m trying out a new theme to try to speed up the sites load time- which tends towards the awful. Let me know if anyone notices the change!

Dolls Du Jour: Days in Denim

Sharing a new paper doll series is always a little stressful. When I design paper dolls to dress, I think about body poses and I think a lot about how many different styles I think I can get from a single body pose. A few perks of this pose are the 3/4 view and the spread legs, which open up some design options.

She will be hard to make into a mermaid though…

Anyway, the first version of this paper doll showed up on Instagram back in 2018. I had to do some extensive redrawing, because the sketchbook was ruined while traveling to Alaska.

Fixing her right foot was also a priority.

A huge thanks you to my Patrons! Sheryl helped me name the series and had the amazing idea to name the dolls after temporal themes. I love this! Because I tend to like giving my paper dolls names that are not really names. I mean, you can find people named Dawn, but like there aren’t a lot of Dusk or Evening named folks running around.

A coloring page with paper dolls to dress with jeans and other contemporary clothing pieces.

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I like to test out new series with sets that show me how many clothing pieces I can fit on a page. After all, the whole point of paper dolls to dress is that you want to dress them. Otherwise, why have the clothing at all?

Denim is the base of most modern wardrobes. Knowing that I have denim done, so to speak, allows for more variety in later sets. Every person (or paper doll) needs a good pair of jeans after all.

Paper dolls to dress with jeans and other contemporary clothing pieces.

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Color scheme wise, I had no idea what to do with this set. Denim is mostly blue, after all, so I went with a green, purple and pink scheme.

I have done occasional random denim themed paper dolls over the years. A few of my favorites- Weekend Denim, Paper Doll Guys Need Jeans, Girl Paper Dolls Need Jeans, Hearts Denim and Bows, Jeans and Tank Tops, and my first ever- Stylish Denim. I’ve heard that denim maxi skirts are back and I am secretly super excited about this.

What do you think of this new series? Let me know in a comments! And head over to join us on Patreon if you want to someday help name a paper doll series.

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.

A paper doll coloring page with three evening gowns and three pairs of shoes.

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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!

A paper doll with contemporary spring evening gowns, dark skin and blond hair. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com.

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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.