Fashion Friday - Jack

I'll admit - today's doll isn't terribly inspired. It's the beginning of my busy season, and my brain is a bit fried! I host Thanksgiving at my house, then my oldest son has an early December birthday, my husband's birthday is near Christmas, then there's Christmas and the various family activities involved with that. Honestly, I enjoy being busy. I like hosting family and friends. I like the long drives to visit distant family.  And Christmas has become a true joy with my sons. I find, though, that "busy" and "creative" don't always fit together well.

So today we've got Jack in a holiday sweater and jeans.  I wanted to make a guy this week.  It's been a while! And, although the outfit isn't very exciting, the pattern is! I've been trying to figure out how to make a vector sweater pattern for ages and this is the result. I really should share a full tutorial on how I made this.  It wasn't super complicated, but it did take a little patience and a lot of alignment.  You'll see more sweater patterns in the future now that I've go the hang of it!

Also, here's a bit of a shout-out. Cory Jensen makes amazing paper dolls and he shared his Kristin Chenoweth paper doll on Twitter. She loved it! You can see for yourself on his Facebook or Twitter. Congrats on the brush with celebrity, Cory.  You deserve the attention!

Download Fashion Friday - Jack pdf here

Fashion Friday - Katrin

One of my on-going tasks is to create a series of digital stock art and sell it online. It's a fairly common practice among digital artists and designers.  I often create random icons and patterns for my paper dolls. (Not always, and I try to note when a pattern isn't mine...) And after several years, I'vce developed quite a little collection of these digital bits & pieces!

This doll is an example of this. I've been very interested in Eastern European folk costumes and folk art, specifically floral motifs.  I've been developing some vector images based on these floral motifs and created this paper doll around those images. And her wardrobe is inspired by folk costumes but in no way a faithful reproduction of anything specific. Also, if you're looking for a few more mix-and-match options, this set would work well with Anastasia.

I'm also working on a set of holiday dolls that I'll post towards the end of November.  Hopefully I can schedule some posts for December and do some housecleaning on this blog.  It's time.  When I search for something on my own site and can't find it, that's a bit of a problem!

So here's Katrin, sporting a wardrobe I am super jealous of and would totally wear!

Download Fashion Friday - Katrin pdf here

Fashion Friday - Renee

Back to normal! I had a lot of fun working on the Halloween paper dolls and I hope all of you enjoyed them, too. I have to admit, I needed a bit of a break from the Friday fashion doll templates. I like these dolls but I'm also eager for new challenges!
 
Today's doll is partly inspired by Rachel's fantastic Boho set and partly inspired by a recent trip to the mall with my sister.  Southwestern inspired fashion seems to be everywhere.  Maybe it isn't - I tend to be a bit behind on trends! I heard that '90s fashion was making a comeback, which is great since I never really did give up my flannels & jeans!

Anyway, I wanted something sort of autumn-ish and southwestern-ish.  I found a terrific sweater pattern and adapted to my uses. I'm also experimenting with more hand-drawn elements in Illustrator.  That's what my new Surface really excels and I'm working to embrace it.  The hair on this doll was all hand-drawn with a stylus directly in Illustrator.

I'm working on several Fashion Friday dolls AND a short series for December.  Stay tuned!

Download Fashion Friday - Renee pdf here

Halloween Wardrobe Page 4

Happy Halloween! This is easily my favorite holiday. Dressing up, getting the house all gothed-up, crafty goodness, and pumpkin carving. Oh, and candy. What is there not to love?!

So most of my tech problems are under control. I can't say enough how great the Microsoft store people were at helping me.  A few more things to work out, but I'm up and running, clearly.

Today I have the last page of my Halloween wardrobe.  Given that I wanted to include more pages but couldn't due to my tech challenges, I decided to go all out on this one.  It is NOT included in the book! This set is a tribute to Morticia Addams.

Download Halloween Wardrobe - Page 4 pdf here

The Addams Family movie came out when I was a kid and I loved everything about it! I had watched reruns of the '60s series, too, and there was just nothing more elegant than Morticia Addams. The center dress and hair are very much Morticia.  The other pieces are just sparkly fun goodness!

I hope you all have a super fun Halloween.  The Matthews family will be spending it in full Star Wars garb.  I'll be Princess Leia, my oldest will be a Stormtrooper, and my youngest will be Darth Vader. And much candy will be had by all!!

Technical difficulties and Halloweens Past

This post is a rant.  I'm just warning you all now!

I have had the worst two weeks as far as technology goes!! First, my cell phone broke. I can only charge it if it's off and the charge doesn't last as long as it should. I tried replacing the battery, then decided to order a new phone.  Fine.  No big deal -- cell phones are delicate and break, etc... Then my brand new Surface started acting up.  The folks at the Microsoft store were amazing and hooked me up with a new one.  They transferred my files & everything! Yay! Well, yay, expect that I can't seem to access my external drive now. Which just happens to be where I store all of my art files. I work on more than one computer and I am paranoid about losing my art, so I back up all of my files almost daily to a 1TB external hard drive.  Most of the time it works seamlessly.  Lately...not so much.

So to boil it down: I have a barely functioning phone, a computer that wasn't working but now IS working, without access to the files I want to use.

The Halloween wardrobe has obviously been postponed.  I will post one more page on Friday NO MATTER WHAT! Do you hear that, ye gods of technology?! These very nice people will get one more paper doll page! In the meantime, feel free to order the book {shameless self-promotion}.

If you're looking for some Halloween crafty fun this week, you can take a look at this post from 2013. These are Halloween paper craft movable dolls I developed a while ago.

There are lots of other amazing Halloween paper dolls & crafts out in the world, too.

Liana's Paper Dolls: She has some incredible Halloween costumes (and wonderful, elaborate stories) this year! Go check it out.

Paper Thin Personas: Although no specifically Halloween themed dolls, she always has the most incredible fantasy themed paper dolls.  Her site is meticulously organized and you can find loads of dolls to print -- both color & black and white.

Tricia-Rennea: This site has some cute paper dolls by Tricia-Rennea.  I've printed out several for my nieces, including the Halloween one and some of the winter one.  Very nice dolls, even if finding them on the site can be a bit clunky.

Miss Missy: She just posted a huge, 5 page Halloween themed black and white paper doll to color! You can find it here.

I will post a page to the Halloween paper doll set on Friday.  I will do so with sheer willpower if I must!

Ghoulish Girls: a Halloween Paper Doll

I finally finished the Halloween paper doll! I'll still release a couple more pages to go along with it, but if you want the complete wardrobe, you'll need to pick up a copy of the book!

It's called Ghoulish Girls: A Halloween Paper Doll.  It features the three paper dolls I've shared here - a vampire, monster, and witch - and has 10 full-color mix & match clothing pages.  There are also 3 black & white coloring pages, including a bonus doll to color!

Here's the front cover.  I am so excited about this book! It was well worth the extra time it took to finish it. Even the cover came out great! My husband was a big help with this - he entertained the kids while I finished this up.  Without him, I don't know if I ever would have finished this book!

Inside the book, there are 10 different mix & match costume sets: a steampunk inspired vampire, a mad scientist monster, a frilly witch, a skeleton, pumpkin, pirate, cat, werewolf, Victorian influenced ghost, and a stylish Egyptian mummy.  I also wanted some coloring pages.  Paper dolls are for kids as well as collectors, and I wanted a paper doll that would be tons of fun to play with! So I included the coloring pages.

If you want a copy, you can grab it from Lulu.com.  It's 20% off until November 1st, so make sure you grab your copy soon!

Halloween Wardrobe Part 3

Here's the third page of my Halloween wardrobe. Today there's a cat, werewolf, and mummy.  And that book I keep mentioning? I have one page left and I'm going to try to have it ready for Monday.  I'm beyond excited about this book.  The complete Halloween wardrobe is great and this has been one of my favorite projects ever! I haven't decided on a title yet.  I'm thinking about calling it "Monster Maidens" or "Ghoulish Girls". We'll see -- if there are any opinions out there, feel free to share!!

Anyway, today's Halloween page is below.  This one has some tiny details that need to be cut, and I recommend a craft knife for those.  Aside from that, have fun!

Download Halloween Wardrobe Page 3 pdf here

You can find part 1 of the Halloween wardrobe here, part 2 is here, and the dolls are here (Viktoria), here (Morgan), and here (Arachne). Have fun!