short hair

Evening with her 1920s Dresses

A free 1920s printable paper doll coloring page with two dresses, three hats and purses.
A free 1920s printable paper doll with fashions. She can be printed and played with.

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So, today’s 1920s printable paper doll was something I drew, because I was a little tired and the great thing about historical paper dolls from time periods I know pretty well is that they aren’t a ton of work. Especially because resources like Good House Keeping can be found online in their complete run. It makes this fun!

Some of you may recall from my Goals of 2022 was more historical paper dolls and more Dolls Du Jour, so I am super psyched that I got to kill two birds with one stone. Metaphorically speaking, I do not condone bird stoning.

This is my 10th historical paper doll for 2022! I reached my goal and it’s only August. It’s only my 6th DDJ paper doll, I still need four more to reach my goal. I like goals.

I digress.

So, today’s 1920s printable paper doll has two gowns designed to fit in with the theme of a 1920s wardrobe. The dress on the left is a blue and cream day dress and the dress on the right is a coral colored evening dress. It’s not really a super formal evening dress- more like something for an evening garden party. You know, if you have a lifestyle where evening garden parties are your thing.

The blue dress was based on this McCall 5120 sewing pattern from 1927. I assume this is a day dress, but I don’t know for certain. It seems to be more casual daywear. That’s a guess based on other dresses I’ve seen. Her clutch was based on this one, but I modified it to match the dress better.

The coral colored evening gown is from 1924 and was first published in Good House Keeping from June 1924. The dress is described as a light weight option for summer parties. I am always playing around with how to show transparency in linework. The purse comes from a French design and I made the color match the dress.

The paper dolls underwear was inspired by this combination from the Met Museum. You can see similar styles here and here. These teddies or combinations seem to have been pretty popular given the number that have survived.

Sometimes people ask me if my paper dolls are historically accurate and I wince a little. Not because I can’t tell you my sources (I clearly can, I just did), but because the entire idea of historical accuracy is sort of impossible. We simply don’t know enough about the past and we never will. So much about the clothing a person choses to wear has to do with unwritten rules that people conform to in society.

I have no idea how an actual woman from the 1920s would feel about these dresses and I never will. That’s impossible. As a result, I have no idea how accurate anything I draw really is. All I can do is tell you where I found my sources and what decisions I made.

And I hope you enjoy these little expeditions into historical clothing as much as I do.

Jade goes Catalog Shopping in the 1980s in today’s paper doll

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Meet Tashi- Talia’s Friend and her Refined Winter Wardrobe

A printable paper doll coloring page set with one doll and a 17 piece wardrobe.
A paper doll printable with a 17 piece fashion wardrobe.

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Meet Talia’s first friend Tashi! My patrons helped me name her. Tashi is a Tibetan name that means “good fortune” and beat out several other names to win the poll I shared on Patreon. Thanks Patrons for helping me name her! I had planned to wait a while to share her, because I had several other Talia dolls finished, but I really wanted to show off her and her fun winter looks, so she jumped the line- as paper dolls sometimes do!

According to my research into Winter trends for this year, I noticed a few things- tapered trousers, pleated skirts, mini-skirts, puffed sleeve sweaters and crop tops with high waisted styles. Interestingly, I also noticed that these lady-like styles got paired with more chunky masculine boots which felt very 1990s. Anyone else getting Doc Marten’s with floral dresses flashbacks? Anyone?

Colorwise, lilac has been an on-trend color for Fall 2021, so I decided to embrace that when I was coloring this paper doll set. I really like pastels for winter, but you have to keep them dusty and vintage feeling, or else you get into saccharine sweet territory.

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Meet Citrine! New Paper Doll Whose Name I Keep Spelling Wrong! And her evening gowns!

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A Whimsical Winter Paper Doll to Print

A winter themed paper doll with nine mix and match clothing pieces including coats, jeans, sweaters, and hats.
A winter themed paper doll clothing page with nine mix and match clothing pieces.

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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.

Sapphire: A Fashionable 1960s Paper Doll for Printing and Playing With

A 1960s fashion printable paper doll coloring page with historical outfist including 2 dresses and 2 suits, along with hats.
A 1960s fashion paper doll with four outfits, shoes and hats to print and play with.

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After I did 1970s sets (one with Sapphire and one with Opal) and a 1950s set, drawing some 1960s paper dolls felt pretty inevitable. The 1960s are a fashion era I like, but haven’t done as much drawing from. I think because my mental image of the era (super 1960s mod dresses) exists and the actual mainstream fashions which were much more conservative. I love the wild mod looks, but most folks weren’t wearing them.

So, today’s 1960s paper doll is Sapphire with a very ladylike wardrobe from mostly the early 1960s, though I didn’t notice that until I was labeling everything. Here’s a few of the sources- her underwear comes from Sears in 1968. Her bra was based on several different years like this one from 1962 or this one from 1964. The pink suit is from McCall’s 6437 from 1962. Her hats both come from my John Peacock book on 20th century fashion, The Complete Fashion Sourcebook.

The evening gown was based on this Vogue 1452 pattern from 1965 designed by Galitzine of Italy. The green suit is from Vogue Couturier Design 1127; ca. 1962 designed by Michael of England. The 1965 Montgomery Ward Spring Summer Catalog was the source for the yellow polka-dotted dress.

You can, of course, see a lot more 1960s fashion references and inspiration on my 1960s Pinterest board. I tend to collect a lot and then pick and chose when the drawing point happens. There will be another 1960s paper doll up soon, as I have a second one finished as well.

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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DDJ: Retro Space Paper Doll Adventures with Dawn

An Asian paper doll coloring page with four dresses and a space suit in a retro-1960s sci-fi theme.
A color printable Asian paper doll with a space wardrobe theme, She's got four dresses, boots and a space suit in 1960s inspired colors.

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There’s something really fun about retro futuristic clothing of the 1960s and I had fun drawing it for today’s printable paper doll. I was tickled when I saw it mentioned in the latest issue of Paper Doll Review. Anyway, I’m always up for drawing paper dolls with retro space clothing. I’ve been watching Star Trek: The Original Series with my partner during the pandemic and it’s a hoot. So, here we have four space mini-dresses, a totally impractical space suit and some very important space boots.

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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.

A pair of Halloween paper dolls on this fun coloring page! Super cute bumble bee costume and a fairy for these fun printable paper dolls.

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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.

A pair of Halloween paper dolls! A bumble bee costume and a fairy costume for these fun printable paper dolls.

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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.

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.

Download Black and White PDF | Download Color PDF | More Jewels & Gemstones 2.0

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.