Thursday, December 10, 2015

December Paper Doll -- Santa Claus, Outfit 5

I don't know about anyone else, but December is flying by! I hope whatever winter holiday you celebrate, it's a happy one.  I have a tendency to focus on Christmas because that's what we celebrate in my house.

Initially, this project was going to be a series of international Santas.  I found that a bit limited and couldn't find nearly as much source material as I would have liked.  One of the themes that I took away from that initial research is the basis of today's Santa paper doll outfit: Father Frost.

According to Wikipedia, Father Frost is a Slavic pre-Christian winter wizard.  He's taken on some Santa Claus attributes in recent history.  Check out the article -- it's an interesting read.

I've mentioned before that my husband's family has a Russian and generally Slavic background.  I find it fascinating.  I love family history and researching his branch has been very difficult but very interesting.  I really wanted to do a Russian inspired Santa because of this.

Tomorrow is a Russian inspired Mrs Claus.  She came out pretty great and I'm eager to share!

If you're looking for the dolls, you can grab them here.

3 comments:

  1. this is beautiful! i've always liked the winter wizard version of santa claus ~ and seeing him in colors other than red. the pattern on the robe is exquisite!

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  2. I love seeing a non-traditional Santa. The pattern on his coat is fantastic.

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  3. I like the winter wizard idea, too. The Santa we take our kids to wears green & burgundy and I always liked that. Fun fact: the Santa we see is at the Burlington Mall in Burlington, MA, where they filmed Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I am in no way encouraging anyone to see the movie, but they set up all of the holiday decorations for the movie set, and then told the mall to keep them. As a result, it's a gorgeous winter set-up!

    As for the patterns, I made those last year. I found an old folk flower embroidery pattern that was cool and I used it to develop a bunch of Illustrator patterns and brushes. For me, Illustrator is the ideal tool for pattern making. Not only can I use them in Illustrator, but I can also export jpgs or pngs and use it in Photoshop, too.

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