medieval inspired

An Elven Fantasy Gown for the Ms. Mannequin Paper Dolls

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Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations:  Elves! ELVES!
Trying my hand at Lord of the Rings inspired Elven fantasy gowns for paper dolls in purple or black and white for coloring. Free to print for personal use from paperthinpersonas.com.

When I decided to draw my elven Ms. Mannequin doll, (name), I knew I needed to also draw some elven clothing for her. For that, I turned to my favorite costuming site The Costumer’s Guide to Movie Costumes. It’s not the most updated or the flashiest, but it has a lot of photos and often photos of people who aren’t the “main character” which is handy.

Since my patrons specifically asked for LoTR inspired fantasy stuff, I wanted to honor that request. In the movies, the elves seem to have a lot of stand collars and long sleeves. Based on those trends, I designed this gown.

It is probably actually two gowns. A robe like garment over an under-gown. I imagine the robe is in something thick and soft like velvet and the under-gown is a raw silk.

Coloring today’s paper doll gown turned out to be very fun. I actually developed three different color schemes for it, before I settled on this monochromatic scheme.

But I didn’t want my other two scheme to not get any time to shine, so there’s an autumn color scheme that you can see over on the Patreon page. (Plus, you can join while your there, if you’d like). Meanwhile, on the blog’s Facebook page, there is a winter storm color scheme.

Hop to the Patreon post and the Facebook page and then tell me, which of these schemes is your favorite in a comment? I’m curious to know.

Meanwhile, there’s a coupon for my readers (Reader2017) good in my Etsy store until the end of the month. It’s 25% off.

Need a paper doll to wear today’s outfit? Pick out a Ms. Mannequin Paper Doll Here

Mini-Maiden’s Lord of the Rings Inspired Fantasy Gown

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Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: Patron Requests for Lord of the Rings Inspired Fantasy Gowns

A Lord of the Rings dress for the mini-maiden paper doll coloring sets in black and white. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com

Three of my patrons all requested Lord of the Rings style fantasy paper doll content for 2017, so Denise, Chris and Grace, this is for y’all. Now, I will confess that I find Lord of the Rings to be among the most boring books ever written. I know there are circles where this opinion would get me shot, but I can’t help it. There is so much description. I just don’t care about trees that much. Give me The Hobbit an I am a happy camper. I would far rather read it.

Still, the movies are visually stunning. So, that is where my inspiration came from for today’s Lord of the Rings dress. Specifically, I was thinking of Eowyn’s “White Wool” Gown. Personally, I wouldn’t color this white myself. I would go for a rich red or blue.

That’s just me though. Don’t let me stifle anyone’s creative juices.

Anyway, when someone says Lord of the Rings dress, I think of classic high fantasy and for me that means sleeves you could hide a small army in. A very small army, but an army none the less. Maybe a mouse army.

I digress.

As I announced yesterday, I now have an Etsy Store! Just for my blog readers, there is a coupon code good for 25% off an order of 4.00 or more until the end of March. Visit the shop and use the code: READER2017

Also, the blog has a fairly new facebook page which is pretty neat. I’m using it to show off stuff from the expansive and amazing archives of PTP. Trust me, there’s a lot of material in there.

And, as always, if you love the blog, think about becoming a patron.

Need a Mini-Maiden paper doll to wear today’s outfit? Pick a Mini-Maiden Paper Doll Here.

Mini-Maidens: Fantasy Gown

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Today’s Printable Paper Doll Inspirations: Bliants, Dirndls, Bunads, and Decorated Corsets 
A black and white fantasy gown design to color from the Mini-Maidens. Free to print and color from paperthinpersonas.com
So, back when I decided to throw the shackles of themes off, I began by drawing five Marisole Monday & Friend’s posts and five Mini-Maiden posts. This is the last of those Mini-Maiden posts. It fells both good and a little odd to be at the “end” of that first run of content.

For those of you who don’t know, I tend to work in “batches” and I talk about this at length in my Behind the Scenes blog on Patreon. You can read the post here and a lot more posts like it on Patreon.

Meanwhile, today’s paper doll fantasy gown was a riff on this set I created for Ms. Mannequin a while ago though in a much more simple style. I love embroidered corsets/waistcoats like those worn with Austrian dirndl or the bunad of Norway and those garments influenced the underbust corset that she wears. The gown underneath it is 12 century France influenced, particularly the bliant, which is a 12th century gown style with long wide sleeves.

Think the stereotypical medieval gown and you’ve got the right image in your head.

Tomorrow there will be Ms. Mannequin paper doll coats and boots up for printing and coloring as my weekly, “Winter” post. Then the week shall continue with some modern spring looks for the Sprites and a fantasy armor set for Marisole Monday & Friends. Wow, it feels so odd sometimes to know exactly what the week holds. Amen for pre-planning. 🙂

Need a Mini-Maiden paper doll to wear today’s outfit? Pick a Mini-Maiden Paper Doll Here.

Bodacious & Buxom: A Curvy Fantasy Paper Doll’s Purple Gown

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Purple medieval fantasy paper doll dress with a black belt and floral detailing. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com

Every week I seem to end up with a favorite dress. I sometimes like to save those dresses for Friday as a way of brightening up at the very end of the week.

Today’s dress is based on Mia’s Garden Ballgowns, a set I did in 2014 based on Wa and Qu Lolita fashions. The color scheme was a little challenging, as it was based on a kimono. I wanted to see how the same colors worked on a totally different dress style. Big fluffy ballgowns vs a simple medieval inspired one.

When I was thinking about Monday’s paper doll, I found myself thinking a lot about color. I tend to do these medieval inspired dresses in a more sedate color schemes, as I did with Phillipa, Marcus as a Warrior, Court Alchemist and In the Land of Dragons.

This time I wanted to do something more vivid and vibrant which is why I went with the rich purple for the body of the over dress and accented it with the undresses cloud blue. The “black” is actually a very very dark red and it’s a subtle thing, but I think it softens the look.

A Curvy Medieval Maiden and her Fantastic Fantasy Wardrobe

So, I am super hopeful I will get a set done for next week. I confess that it is Friday and nothing is done yet, but I want to make something for Monday. Things have just been very busy this week, so if I end up having to go on a short Haitus, I’ll make the announcement on Monday.

Meanwhile, follow the blog on Twitter @paperpersonas and if you love the blog, think about becoming a Patron. There’s a Patron only dress this week, if that’s a lure for anyone.

I hope you all have a great weekend. I’ll be spending mine vacuuming a lot. Stupid fleas.

Bodacious & Buxom: A Curvy Fantasy Paper Doll’s Accessories

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Today’s Accessory Thursday post is a little late and I feel guilty about that, but in my defense, let me explain.

So, remember how I said I was moving? And I did move and I love my new place. However, the previous tenant had pets.

And I discovered Monday that those pets left behind some… friends. Small jumping biting friends.

Fleas.

I reported my unwanted roommates on Monday. They sprayed the unit yesterday and I spent most of yesterday evening either out or sitting on the back patio while the unit aired out. But seriously, I have never been more happy to smell the scent of pesticide in my life.

Anyway, with all the laundry and other things I’ve been doing, there just wasn’t time to work on this blog post much.

So, that’s why its a little late.

Anyway, enough about my Adventures with Fleas! Let’s talk about paper dolls.

Today, we have three pairs of shoes. Each one is colored to match one of the three dresses, including the paper doll dress that goes up on Friday. There’s also a book and a musical instrument and some papers. I struggle a little with scale sometimes with the B&B dolls, because they have such huge heads.

(Don’t get me wrong, I like huge heads, but it makes some stuff challenging.)

Two usual pieces of housekeeping: The doll was posted Monday and the black and white versions are at the top of the post. Enjoy!

Bodacious & Buxom: A Curvy Fantasy Paper Doll’s Spring Dress in Pink

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I never used to like pink. I mean, I went through a phase when I was like four and I demanded that my room be painted pink. My mother kindly did this for me. Later, the room was painted a bright yellow. I distinctly recall returning from camp or something and the room suddenly being yellow. My mother had painted it while I was away, though I do at least remember that she had asked me if I minded it being yellow before she painted it. During this whole time, I refused to wear pink. Pink, I decided sometime around second grade, was not a color for me.

I’m saying all this, because I have completely come around to pink. I think it is a beautiful color. I have to stick to brighter or darker pinks in the real world, but in paper doll land, the sky is the limit on my shades of pink.

So, today’s paper doll dress was colored using the color scheme from Dreaming Princess as the base. Dreaming Princess is one of the most complexly patterned sets I have done in years and the color scheme was a real struggle. Still, I loved how the original set came out and I wanted to adapt those colors to today’s paper doll dress to print.

Every paper doll dress is a little different, of course. Yesterday, we had an autumnal scheme. Today’s dress, I think is more spring-like. I am, I confess, not totally pleased with how the hem detail turned out. I didn’t properly adjust it for the curve of the paper doll’s body. I’m a bit disappointed in myself.

Anyway, enjoy the paper doll dress! Tomorrow we have shoes and stockings.

Bodacious & Buxom: A Curvy Fantasy Paper Doll’s Autumnal Dress

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An autumnal fantasy gown with a belt decorated in beads for my curvy printable paper doll series called Bodacious and Buxom. Also available in black and white for coloring.

Can I be totally honest with y’all? I feel like I can.

These are the sorts of dresses I draw when I am feeling exhausted and I know I have to get a set done. Is that a bad thing to admit? It’s not that I don’t enjoy drawing them, but they don’t take a lot of mental energy. It’s like safe drawing. There’s not a lot of stretching here.

Sometimes though, I do think that is okay.

As I said on Monday, the color schemes for all of this week’s outfits are based on previously posted printable paper doll sets. For example, today’s paper doll dress for the B&B series is based on my Pixie series paper doll Malina who was posted in 2014. I have always really loved Malina’s color scheme and I thought it was a fun one to transform into this medieval fantasy dress. Malina is a contemporary fashion paper doll, but I think her color scheme is very universally autumnal.

It’s September and it should be chilly and there should be changing leaves. I confess I am getting neither changing leaves nor chilly weather here in Alabama, but I want it! I love the autumn and I want to get to experience some of it, darn it!

Now, a friendly reminder, you can get the doll that I drew to go with today’s printable paper doll dress from Monday’s post, but feel free to dress up any of the B&B dolls in this fantasy gown.

Also, if you like the blog and want to help me keep it online, please consider becoming a Patron. I know I say this a lot, but it really does help me subsidize the server, security and related costs to running PTP.

And, of course, I always love to hear what you think about today’s dress.

A 1300s Fashion Paper Doll

1300s-historical-paper-doll-logo Once again, we are dabbling in the 1300s with today’s paper doll. There’s no new sources for this one, so if you want to know what I referenced, than I would recommend returning to my last paper doll of the 1300s with a sources list at the bottom.

One of my goals for 2016 was to draw ten historical paper dolls. I confess I am far from achieving that goal and we’re halfway though the year (nearly), so I seriously need to get my act together on this one. So, my goal for the next few days is to buckle down and get some drawing, scanning and finishing done.

We’ll see how that goes.

I have a few days off work and I always start these things with a long list of “goals”, but I fear my plans are often larger than my capacity. Still, I’m out of backlog and nothing is as good as an artist motivation as desperation.

A 1300s fashion paper doll coloring page with a five piece wardrobe. Free to print and color from paperthinpersonas.com.

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Picking out colors wasn’t very hard, since I seem to always come back to the same ones when it comes to the 1300s. I blame it on medieval manuscripts I have seen. I always think of the 14th century was being red and blue and gold.

Sterotypical, perhaps, but none the less. There we are.

A 1300s fashion paper doll with a five piece wardrobe. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com.

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Between my new 1300s Buxom and Bodacious paper doll, my viking paper doll, and my Cranach paper doll, we’re starting to get a pretty nice set of early Western Fashions. I keep promising myself I’ll do one from a decade of the 19th century, but I can’t pick one. So, 19th century B&B series suggestions would be welcomed.

Lastly, I hope everyone has a delightful week.

Greta Goes out Hunting: A Fantasy Printable Paper Doll Coloring Page

logo-greta-hunterAs I mentioned a while ago, my computer died while I was traveling to visit family in Alaska. I’m pleased to report it is working fine now and it just cost money. Also, I should really back up my data more often, because hard drive problems suck.

Anyway, let’s talk about nicer things like paper dolls.

One of the reasons I keep a backlog of paper dolls is that should disaster strike, I have some things to post. I confess that my backlog has gotten lower these last few weeks and this has been a rough week for finding time to do blog work. Five hour power outage, jet lag, computer problems… Yeesh.

So, here is Greta and she is going out hunting. I didn’t give her any arrows, but…. err…. No excuse for that one, actually. I just kinda forgot. Maybe she can garrote things with her bow string or something. The image of paper dolls garroting small fuzzy woodland creatures in order to make them into stew is now going to haunt me.


Heading out on the hunt is this fantasy paper doll coloring page with a ten piece wardrobe. From paperthinpersonas.com
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Other news… Assuming I get my act together, there should be a Marcus paper doll on Monday and then some other stuff in the coming weeks. I am trying to get excited, but I am struggling to feel inspired at the moment. I’m sure it’ll come back. It always does eventually.

How do other people deal with lulls in inspiration?

Tibbets and Kirtles in Color: A Printable Paper Doll of the 1300s

logo-1300-colorLast week, we got to see my mid-1300s paper doll set in black and white. This week, here she is in color. Historical printable paper dolls always make me a little nervous. In inevitably, choices have to be made about what to include or not include and how to render a period’s fashion. These choices are easier the more you know about the period and harder the less you know. One of the reasons I often turn to Medieval inspired or Renaissance inspired rather than actual historical paper dolls is the knowledge that I don’t know enough to always make appropriate choices.

What I am not comfortable doing is always trusting the many sites out there that don’t cite their sources with enough detail to actually find the material if you needed it or want to confirm it’s authenticity. While I love the internet, I find that I don’t use it that much when I am doing this sort of research. I seem to fall back on my library training and rely on reputable secondary sources published in scholars with names in the field, backed up my own knowledge of solid collections of digitized medieval manuscripts where I can dig for source images, plus a few tumblers and blogs that seem to know what they are doing.

And this method worked great until I got down the problem of color. Now, I always think of the 1300s as being richly red and blue and gold, because those are colors I have seen in medieval manuscripts. Just because, however, they made a dress red in a book doesn’t mean the dress was commonly red in real life. Pigments used for illumination aren’t the same a pigments used for dyeing cloth and medieval art is heavy on analogy and symbolism.

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What I really didn’t want to do was do a ton a research on natural dye processes, because a lot of people have written a lot on the topic. Textile fragments like this one, an incredible velvet cope or this equally amazing cope from the V&A Collections proved to me that colors were rich in the 1300 hundreds. So, I used those images along with this Medieval Colors article from Aux Mailles Godefroy. The resulting colors are a little more muted than was probably possible in the 1300s, but I just couldn’t get over my preconceived notions of muted tones despite seeing examples of bright yellows produced with natural dyes. The truth is that both linen and wool, common fabrics in the 1300s, take dye really well. The world was likely a lot more vibrant than my preconceived notions of history suggest.

By the way, most of my primary and secondary sources for this paper doll set are listed on the black and white version. It was a long list and I didn’t want to repeat it here. So go check that out, if you want to see what I used to create my mid-1300’s paper doll.

Poppets Playing with Wooden Swords

poppet-wooden-sword-logoClearly, I’ve been on a bit of a medieval kick with Monday’s 14th century set and today’s psuedo-medieval Poppet paper doll set. Ironically, I’m not that much of a medieval fantasy fan. As far as book genres, I’m much more into urban fantasy than anything in the classic or epic fantasy genres.

Of course, urban fantasy generally doesn’t lend to crazy paper doll outfit sets.

This set is partly because of my goal this year to make  more Poppet paper doll sets. Last year, I only did eight Poppet sets which seems rather like a low number. This year my goal is at least ten. I also really want to do some historical clothing sets for them, since I have an absurd love of Victorian children’s clothing. Those sets, however, aren’t even drawn yet. I think I should finish some of my unfinished Poppet paper doll clothes before I start drawing more of them.

I have a lot of unfinished Poppet sets lurking accusingly on my computer and demanding completion.

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Today’s paper doll set features colors in the same family as my Marcus the Warrior paper doll. I almost gave them real swords, but that seemed like a terribly dangerous thing to give a small child, so a wooden sword would have to do. I really do enjoy drawing toys as accessories for the Poppets.

Meanwhile, I have been giving a lot of thought to Copyright and other issues of posting content on the internet. Would people be interested on a post on that topic?

Lady in a Castle: A Printable Paper Doll

Marisole Monday & Friend's Logo. Fantasy paper doll. One of my pet peeves is that fantasy movies always default to the assumption that the characters involved are white-skinned. I just saw Into the Woods which I recommend highly- I am a huge Sondheim fan- and I noticed they had some brown-skinned extras which is great, but all of the main characters were white skinned.

I know one of the common arguments against skin-tone diversity in classic fantasy or fairy tales is that they are often European in origin and it wouldn’t be accurate to have brown skinned characters; however, I’m not sure the argument for “accuracy” really holds up. First of all, there was a lot more diversity in Europe a lot earlier than most people realize. Secondly, if there are going to be giants and magic, can’t we accept the idea that some of the characters might be darker skinned? Does that really deeply violate suspension of disbelief? We are talking about a genre of story with singing harps, talking animals, and pumpkin coaches.

This is all a really complicated way of saying that I try to give my fantasy paper dolls a variety of skin tones, including weird ones like green, more green and orange. Um… Is it bad I just noticed I have two green skinned paper dolls? I could have sworn one of those had blue skin. I should keep better track of these things.

A fantasy paper doll with brown skin and four gowns. She also has two pairs of shoes. Free to print from paperthinpersonas.com
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Moving on from her skin tone, I stuck with the pale scheme I had planned and tried to focus on greens, blues and purples while using yellow and pink as accent colors. I think it came out pretty well, though coloring those detailed patterns took forever. Every time I add a bunch of pattern, I promise myself that it is the “last time” and then I do it again- because I really do like pattern.

Changing topic a bit, one of the most common questions I get is “Why don’t you sell your paper dolls?” I decided to answer this question for Abby of While She Naps. Abby took my thoughts about hobby and business, combined them with those of some other very talented crafters, and created a really great post about business, craft, and why we do what we do. I recommend going and reading it post-haste.

Meanwhile, Vikings are winning my “What historical period should B&B visit” poll which means, I suppose, I should go learn something about Viking dress. If you have not voted, please do. It is highly likely that I will not totally ignore the outcome. It is also highly likely it will take forever for me to get it done, because I am me.