Monday, August 15, 2016

New Paper Doll Book!

I'm probably not the only person who does this, but I set "age" goals.  Like, I'll be married and have kids by 30 (which I mostly did, so hooray for that!)....that sort of thing.  Some of them are ridiculous.  When I was a kid, I wanted to learn 5 languages by 21. It was ambitious, to say the least! I've continued the habit as an adult, with slightly less lofty goals!

One of those goals is to get a paper doll book published with a "real" publisher.  I set myself an arbitrary goal of sending images to Dover by the time I was 35.

And I did send something.....



...a little over a year ago.  With no word since.

After reading Rachel's interview, I realized that 1) paper dolls are incredibly niche 2) print publishing is a tough business in general (especially for niche interests) and 3) Dover has a remarkable quantity of amazing talent to draw from already. All of these things make me feel a little less personally invested in this arbitrary goal of a real publisher, and more interested in just doing what I love.  And I LOVE creating art of all sorts.

So after waiting a little over a year, I decided to put the book together myself. And I got the proof copy this week!

The photos are not great.  I took them with my phone, in bad light, on my couch.  Still, I think the print book is an almost perfect match for my original art.


Here's a blurry image of the title page.  I've been trying to create more appealing title pages instead of the black & white text versions of the past.

A close-up from the title page.




And three pages of dresses.  Those are shadows, not creases, because I took awful pictures!

The back cover with the two dolls.

The idea for this book was a mix & match Victorian set.  I came across something on Pinterest called a robe a transformation: a transformation dress.  Apparently every dress Charles Frederick Worth created fell in this category, and this book could have easily just been a Worth themed book.  Instead, I found lots of different transformation dresses -- I even included a list of references in the back of the book! I haven't done a full-blown Victorian set before and I wanted to push the limits of my Photoshop "painting" techniques.  This paper doll (like almost all of them) started as pencil sketches.  I scanned & "painted" them in Photoshop.

Here's a preview of the entire book.  I loved making it, start to finish.  It was the kind of project that was just effortless and amazing and satisfying.

Hopefully, you like it, too.

Grab your copy here for now.  It'll be on Amazon, Barnes & Noble Online, etc, soon.


5 comments:

  1. oh my gosh this is GORGEOUS! congratulations! i will be buying a copy as soon as i can get my tumbleweeded finances in order (probably october)!

    sorry i have been absent so long. things are out of order for me at the moment, but i am crossing my fingers that the universe is settling down again and i hope to be returning to the land of the living soon!

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    1. oh yay hi boots!!

      I have to say, the book really printed out beautifully. I'm really happy with my proof copy. It was definitely a passion project - I LOVED making this!!

      And time....tell me about it! We had a super chill summer. My husband started a work-from-home job after a decade of daily commutes that averaged anywhere from an hour to 3 (one way) and getting up at 4:30AM. So yeah, he slept in...til 7! But school started back up, and my oldest is starting activities, etc, etc...

      So basically every week I stare at my project list, look wistfully at what used to be my studio (the husband took it over as a home office -- which I'm mostly ok with!!), and think to myself, I can't do this. There don't seem to be enough hours in the day to do ONE POST a week. But I'm hanging on :)

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    2. Hi there Julie, I Love your blog & your beautiful paper dolls! Thank you sooo much for sharing with us! You are AWESOME! 😃❤😃

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    3. Thank you so much! I'm always happy to hear that people enjoy my work :)

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  2. the important thing is you're still meeting your goal in spite of all the obstacles and sacrifices! and even if you've lost ground in some places, sounds like you've gained it in more important ones. : D

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