Toddler Fashion Friday - Black and White Round 4

Happy Friday!  I'll admit that I totally forgot it was Friday.  And so the holiday blur begins....

As promised, I have the final installment of the black & white toddler paper dolls.  My nieces and I colored & cut these at Thanksgiving and it was great!  And my mom made some suggestions that I need to think about.  There may be some minor modifications in the future.

I also promised a preview of the December paper doll.

Here it is! These are some of the sketches for Santa and Mrs Claus.  I have the dolls & first week or so of out fits ready to go.  That might be a new record for me!  It's coming along beautifully and I think this will be the best December doll yet.

Here are the two toddlers -- right-click to download & print.  I noticed while printing and cutting these yesterday that there are some discrepancies among these dolls that I want to fix.  It's pretty much just color differences and it's making me crazy.  I'll fix those before I share a pdf. 

Anyway, I'll start posting the December dolls on the 1st.  Mark your calendar :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US (or celebrating abroad...)!  Apparently, I've only ever had one Thanksgiving paper doll posting. You can find it here.

So this year I'm sharing a black & white coloring page version of the Thanksgiving paper doll.  It's part of the now-defunct Paper Janes project.  I'm trying to decide if I want to try having a paper doll store with downloads as well as selling books online.  As of today, I'm still undecided.  We'll see what happens.

Speaking of books, shop from your pjs or stretchy pants today!! There are some awesome coupons on the Lulu.com home page.  Grab one of my paper dolls book for the holidays :)

Here are two Thanksgiving paper doll coloring pages.  These will fit the previous Thanksgiving paper doll as well.  Right-click to download & print.  Have a festive, family-filled, and fun Thanksgiving! 

Toddler Fashion Friday - Black and White Round 3

We're at the halfway point of these black and white toddler paper dolls!  Having these prepared in advance has allowed me a little extra time to create the December paper doll series.  It's a good one and I'm really excited to share it!! It's Santa and Mrs. Claus and the sketches came out great!

For today, here are the dolls.

I'll admit, between the Santa paper doll, client work, and family stuff, I've been pretty busy.  If I haven't gotten to comments/emails, etc, I will soon.

Next week I'll have the last black & white toddlers and a preview of the Santa paper doll.  Til then, have a great week!

Toddler Fashion Friday - Black and White Round 2

This month is going by way too fast for me.  We already have our first party of the season -- it's an early Thanksgiving party with some extended family.

And so it begins....

I haven't actually started my December doll yet. I have some sketches started & should be able to get started on it next week.  I'm trying to get a jump on the holidays, but my best intentions don't always work out.  We have Thanksgiving, two birthdays, and 4 Christmas celebrations every year and ANY jump I can get on the chaos is a help!

Today's dolls are black & white toddlers.  I mentioned last week that I'll have a pdf round up after these are all posted.

I assume that people print & color these, but that may not be the case.  If you decide to color these digitally, here's what I recommend.  Set the doll on its own layer and set it to Multiply.  Color on the layer underneath.  Just about every digital art program, whether Photoshop or something else, will have this option.  I have grey shadows that blend nicely when set to multiply.

Anyway, enjoy the dolls.  There are two more sets coming up this month!

Toddler Fashion Friday - Black and White Round 1

For the month of November, I'll be posting black & white toddler paper dolls to color.  Part of this is because I know coloring dolls are popular and part of it is to buy myself some time to work on the December paper doll.  The December doll takes a lot of time & effort and I have a love/hate relationship with it! I keep coming back to it, so clearly the "love" part wins out!

Each Friday in November, I'll post a girl and boy to color.  At the end of the month, I'll have a pdf of the complete set.  You can right-click and save each image to print & color until then.

When I design paper dolls in Illustrator, I create them in full color so going back & making them black and white takes some time. I leave the grey shading and I probably shouldn't.  I just can't have plain old lines for some reason....

You can grab other black and white sets here and here!

So next week, more of the same.  Have fun coloring!

Akinyi and Friends Paper Doll Book

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Masquerade paper doll project.  It came out great and I would LOVE to do another collaboration!

On Halloween, I got a treat of my own -- my proof copy of Akinyi and Friends: A Mix and Match Paper Doll Book.   I learned my lesson with the last paper doll book debacle and ordered a proof copy immediately after creating the book! 

Here are the front and back covers.  I really liked the watercolor background and wanted to include it here.  The dolls are slightly smaller than the ones I posted on the blog.  They needed to fit better on an 8.5 by 11 page.

 

I also included a preview on the title page.  I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner...!  The preview includes some of the new wardrobe I developed specifically for the book.

For this book edition, I included  4 new full-color wardrobe pages and 3 coloring pages.  The book came out great!  Here are a couple of pictures of my copy.

I'm really excited with the way this book came out.  I may revisit these dolls in another book at some point. Creating a mix and match wardrobe with a limited color palette was a challenge and I'm really glad I did it.

You can grab your copy here and it'll will be on Amazon.com soon, too.  So will the Fairy Tale and Ghoulish Girls books.

For the month of November, I'll be posting black & white toddler dolls to color.  And I need to get started on the December doll....! Check back Friday for the toddlers!!