Today’s paper doll reminds me of Marlyn Monroe… a dark gothic Marlyin Monroe, I suppose. For those of you who want a far less gothic paper doll- something a little lighter, Lily & Thistle has this darling little girl printable paper doll with two dresses. There’s versions you can pay for as well, but the free version is enough for me. 🙂
I hope everyone is having a great holiday for this lovely time of the year. I’m visiting family, so things might be a little erratic around here. I’ve been thinking a lot about goals for next year for the blog- what I would like to improve and do better at and have more of. The list is long and expensive, but I have high hopes for things going well here in paper doll blog land.
If this were a dating game show, I would describe Mara as a charming young woman with a love of flowers and long walks through the woods. Since this isn’t a dating game show, as far as I know, I think I’ll just stick with saying that Mara is a one page paper doll with a wardrobe of nine pieces that can be mix and matched to make up 18 different combinations.
In case you’re wondering how I got to that number, the calculation looks like this:
((Number of Tops * Number of Bottoms)+ Number of Dresses)*Number of Shoes= Outfit Combinations
It gets a little more complicated if you add in jackets and other layering pieces, but usually it works out well and, of course, it doesn’t consider things like how well the pieces match with each other. Yes, I might be a little OCD to have come up with a formula for calculating paper doll wardrobe options. (Only sort of math I can really imagine doing…)
Later or tomorrow, there will be something fun and new for the first day of Hanukkah (a holiday no one likes to try to spell) which starts tonight at Sunset.
I wanted to play around with bright colors and when I play with bright colors, I like to use a darker skintone on the paper doll. I think it looks lovely with the bright greens, blues, pinks, oranges and purples which make up this set. Colors inspired, I confess by those runt candies. Remember those? I loved Runts when I was a kid.
Candy Coated Couture’s skin tone is the same as Book Loving Princess, so they can share shoes- should you feel the need to give the princess some rocking multi-colored platforms. (Who doesn’t need rocking multi-colored platforms, I ask you?)
There probably won’t be a Dictionary Girls update this week, because I don’t have one ready and I’m traveling on Wednesday to visit family for the holidays, there will, however, be Shadow and Light up on Friday and a one-shot paper doll to make up for the lack of Dictionary Girls.
Today’s Marisole is brought to you by the illustrations of Ivan Bilibin and Russian fairy tales and this random blog post I found of some fairy tale fashions from 2009. Also, the letter F.
I’ve also posted three new pages of clothing for the magnetic Marisole paper dolls. One is a page of fantasy clothing and the other two are historical sets of clothing. I will be posting a new magnetic paper doll set later this week which should be exciting. 🙂 If anyone wants to print out the magnetic paper dolls, this is a great time of the year to find cheap tins all over the place. I’ve seen them at Walgreens and the Dollar Store.
I would like everyone to meet Constance. Isn’t she cute? She’s the best friend of Prudence, I decided after I finished coloring her, though she has a less vintage inspired style. Her trousers came out a less perfect color of camel then I thought they would, but her shoes are totally cute and I love her freckles. (I blame my love of both freckles and red hair to reading Anne of Green Gables at a young and impressionable age.)
A woman I used to work with was named Constance, though everyone called her Connie. I have an odd soft spot for virtue names like Constance or Prudence or Faith or Grace, though I am less a fan of a few of the odder ones which were common back when the Puritans were naming their children. Naming your child Temperance is one thing, but calling them Condolence just seems odd (and that’s not even getting into some of the odder names which hung around when the Puritans were naming things). Still, I suppose that’s easy for me to say since I’m not naming a child in 1615 or something.
On a totally unrelated note (because segues are for other people), I have just recoded the entire gallery page and have folded it into the indexes and now there is a Printable Paper Doll Index page which links to all the printable series and individual dolls. If you click on the image on the page it will take to to either the blog post devoted to the paper doll or to a separate page with the PDF’s and PNG’s to print on it. I’d love to hear what people think of the change.
Sometimes, this blog feels a bit like albatross around my neck, only with fewer feathers. It’s gets heavy and awkward and then I don’t update for a few days and I feel guilty for not updating.
And I tell myself, “No one reads it” (which I know to not be true, but it’s a good line) or “I don’t have anything to post” (which is also usually false) or “There’s no point in posting something when I know I don’t have a weeks worth of posts” (also not true, but it’s an excuse) and, of course, “I’m too busy” (which of all my excuses is actually sometimes true).
None of these excuses really keep me from feeling guilty about the whole thing, but they make the guilt slightly easier to deal with.
I wonder if other paper doll bloggers feel this way. I don’t know. We’re not exactly a massive community.
Wow, this might be the most melodramatic post I’ve ever put up on this blog and I almost didn’t post it, but I’m struggling to be more personal on the blog. The irony is that I have been drawing, but none of it has been blog related and I have tons penciled, but am having a hard time getting around to inking, scanning and coloring. But I buckled down this weekend and got some done, so I have high hopes for at least getting back to some updating.
Starting that trend is today’s Marisole flapper paper doll rocking some roaring 1920s fashions. She’s wearing a wardrobe taken from fashion plates and magazines of the twenties. While I love 1920’s fashion, I don’t know if Marisole wears it very well. She has pretty serious hips and this was a time when long and lean was the name of the game. So, I have some mixed feelings about how they all look. Still, I have enjoyed getting to do some historical stuff with Marisole and I do think she makes a pretty cute “flapper”.
I’m also playing around with this new “related” posts feature which I think might be totally useless. I’ll give it a few more weeks.
When I was the child, one of my favorite dolls was a Rapunzael doll who had blond hair and a lavender and purple empire princess dress with slit sleeves. I still own the doll and the dress, though she’d gotten a hair cut since then. When I think of a “classic” princess, I don’t think of huge skirted dresses, I think of dresses like these.
And when I’m tried and I’m not sure what to draw, I tend to fall back on dresses like these. Ideas can, at times, be hard to come by.
On an unrelated note, I noticed that this is my 65th Marisole Paper doll which I am fairly proud of. I suppose I should wait for the 75th before celebrating, but that would be in two and a half months and I doubt I would notice. Therefore, I have decided to do a drawing. Answer the question below in the comments of this post to enter.
The question: Which Marisole paper doll is your favorite? (And you can give a one word answer like “Zombie” or the full title.)
The Rules: 1) One answer per person. 2) Contest will run for this week. 3) At the end of the week, I will put the names of everyone who answered into a hat, draw one randomly, and announce the winner on next Monday with the Marisole post. 4) If you have won once this year, you’re not eligible to win, but feel free to answer my question.
The Prize: A custom paper doll (Marisole or otherwise) drawn to your request. This one or this one are examples from past drawings and contests.
It is entirely possible that my least favorite part of posting paper dolls is coming up with the title. (Adding tabs is a close second on the list of least favorite activities, I should just draw them rather then using Photoshop. I don’t know why I insist on Photoshop. It just makes things more annoying.) I think I might just start numbering the things. Or using some strange code…. Seriously….
So it’s very late and it’s been over 90 here for the last week. I am hot. I am sweaty. I am dying from a combination of humidity and heat. We had a thunderstorm this morning which woke me up and dropped the temp, so that it was only 90 degrees today. How nice.
It’s times like this when I miss the cold damp climes of my Alaskan home.
Anyway, enough about the weather. There are paper dolls. They are wearing stylish fantasy dresses. These dresses were inspired by the Renaissance in the same way Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was actually inspired by the novel, which is to say only in the smallest and slightest way. Truly, I don’t know what Disney was thinking turning a book in which all of the main characters die into a children’s film, though I recommend the novel to anyone who has a really long plane ride and doesn’t mind being depressed during it. Does it show that I’m not a huge Victor Hugo fan? In the novel’s defense I should say the language is beautiful, but the plot is rather depressing. I can’t fault Hugo’s skill as a novelist, but I’d rather read Dumas.
Hmmm… I think that’s enough literary criticism for one blog post. Enjoy the paper dolls. (You can decide if she should die in a mass grave while clutching the dead body of her love. I won’t judge.)
I’ve never done a black and white Pixie paper doll before, that I recall and I must confess I’m only doing one now because I’m busy and I needed something to post. I felt a little guilty just posting paper dolls I had already posted in black and white, so I did two of them to make myself feel a little less guilty about recycling material. Besides, sometimes the choice is between something or nothing and I’d rather post something.
I’ve been terribly busy this weekend prepping for classes that start next week and preparing to travel to Pennsylvania for a wedding. I’ll be out of town for a few days. The blog should post on it’s own without me (assuming I get done what I need to get done to make that happen), but there might be a slight hiatus while I travel.
I enjoy weddings, though I was never one of those people who dreamed about my own wedding day. I never caught the “wedding fever” so common to young girls. I did have a wedding Barbie doll, as I recall, but I think she spent most of her time either fighting monsters or going to balls in her pretty white dress.
The purple paper doll dress was based on Natalie Portman’s Oscar gown, though truth be told I don’t think I did a very good job on it. I was drawing it without reference images which always means I’m a little less accurate then I would like. Liana did a wonderful version during the night of the Oscars. I recommend it highly. It’s looks much better then mine.
I’ve mentioned in the past that I can always tell when I’m drawing on auto-pilot and this is a set I drew when I wasn’t really prepped for. I didn’t have any reference images, or thumbnails, I was just kinda winging it. Personally, I think it’s weaker for the lack of prep work. I always draw better when I have something (thumbnail doodle or photo reference) to work from.
On a semi-unrelated note, I love paper dolls with fronts and backs like these ones from 1935. I wish I had the paper engineering skills to draw some of them on my own.
Also, I have a poll in the sidebar. The future of Curves 2.0 is in your hands.
I had realized I hadn’t done a blond Marisole paper doll in a while, so I thought I would do so. I’ve also been working on a Marisole side project which made me realize how few pairs of pants I had ever drawn for the paper doll. To solve both these problems, I offer up and pants wearing blond paper doll. I never said my justifications were entirely logical, I just said they existed.
Maybe it’s because I am in library school, or perhaps simply because I tend to be analytical by nature, but I think a lot about what I could do to improve PTP. So, I made a list and my goal is to try to do these things over the next few weeks months.
1. Post more regularly. (I do think I am improving on this one.) 2. More process content. (Things like the post about inspiration for Curves that I did.) 3. Links to museums and libraries in an organized fashion or maybe posts about historical costume. Is that something people would enjoy? I’m not sure… 4. Tutorials (?) I don’t know what I would do tutorials about, which is part of the problem. 5. Additional access points to the site. I’d like to do some sort of theme and subject based indexing, but I’m not yet quite sure how. Thoughts are ongoing.
That’s my list of things I think the site could use. What would other people ask for if they could?
Update 8/11/2014: This paper doll is now available in black and white for coloring. You can find her here.
I was going to call this post Under the Sea, but I called my last mermaid paper doll Under the Sea. I didn’t think I could use the name twice, so I did the best I could with another, basically the same name. Synonyms… wonderful things.
It took me a long time to decide to do a mermaid version of Marisole. It was requested by a few different people, but I put it off since I wasn’t sure how to make tails work with the paper doll’s leg pose. In the end, I drafted both tails in full size several times, before settling on these designs. I wanted to do one traditional green tail and one more tropical exotic tail in the colors of my pet beta fish, Levi. (His full name is Levithan, but I call him Levi for short.) He has more blue in him then the pink and gold of the tail, but I liked the bright colors and though the pale yellow looked wonderful with the pink.
I strongly recommend taking an exact-o knife, or a pair of scissors, and cutting up along the side of the paper doll’s body between her arm and stomach. That way the tops and tails will both fit much better. The placement of the right arm is one of my major frustrations with Marisole. She needs to be redesigned, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
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