Frightful Frocks: Ghosts

 Two things conspired against me for today's theme: time and inspiration. I had no motivation or inspiration to make a ghost themed outfit. And I was rushing to do it! I really wanted to wrap this up for Halloween. 

I poked around Pinterest for inspiration and there were a lot of Victorian style ghosts. YAWN. Kinda bored with that idea. And then I saw some costumes that were sort of rags and chains. I wasn't crazy about that either. I liked the idea of like a handkerchief skirt so I started there.

 Right-click to download and save at full resolution

What I ended up with was a totally 80s ghost! It's almost like a monochrome Cyndi Lauper! It's definitely a rushed set but it's ok. I haven't seen Rachel's ghost yet - that'll be a fun reveal! Things have been so hectic around here that I've had a quick look at she's working on and that's about it. I'll likely download her whole project and look at it sometime next week. 

You can grab my whole set here. If there are any problems with the link, please let me know. And thanks to Rachel for coming up with a fun project and asking me to join in!   

 

Frightful Frocks: Pumpkins

 Today is the penultimate post for our Frightful Frocks! That is an excellent word - penultimate. It means "next to last" and the only reason I remember that word at all is because my family is completely obsessed with Taskmaster, a British comedy competition show on YouTube. It's fantastic and mostly family friendly. A little language, a little suggestiveness... but for teens like ours, it's hysterical! 

Anyway, that's my fun new word at the moment.

We have a pumpkin page for today. One more to go for tomorrow and I am trying my absolute best to get it out on time! 

 Right-click to download the full resolution image

 I wasn't quite sure where to go with this one. I made a couple of fantastic pumpkin dresses for my Flapper Halloween book and I didn't want to repeat those ideas. Instead, I went in a sort of 19th century direction. I saw a few costume enthusiasts who designed some pumpkin themed dresses and I sort of riffed on those. The hat, however, was VERY inspired this specific hat: 

I think hers is far better than my orange-on-orange rendering. It's lovely! Her blog and social media seems to be inactive but still worth a look. 

Take a look at Rachel's totally different take on the theme! It's neat seeing how differently we tackle these ideas. 

So tomorrow (fingers crossed) I'll post the last costume. 

ALSO, for anyone looking for digital art software, Affinity just announced today that is free for all. Might be time to finally commit to learning it...
 

Frightful Frocks: Fortune Teller

 When Rachel was work shopping her theme ideas for this project, I knew I definitely wanted to tackle the fortune teller! There were so many ways this could go. 

 I wanted a vintage vibe and a Romani feel. When I came across this pattern cover, it seemed perfect!

Right-click to download and save at full resolution

 For the skirt, I swapped out playing cards for Tarot cards and created the color scheme around that. I like the bold primaries for this. The skirt was almost took big for my page! 

Hopefully you're all enjoying these pages from me & Rachel. She has a really sweet poem with each theme and I think that's just a delightful little bonus! Check back the rest of this week - I'm trying my hardest to get the last two outfits drawn up! 

Frightful Frocks: Bats

Fun fact: this week it's Bat Appreciation Week! I'm not sure what that entails but I'm ok with it. Bats are terrific. Today's bat outfits were inspired by a couple of things I found on Pinterest. I'm a long time user of Pinterest and I know it's a bit problematic, especially with AI and pushing "sponsored" pins, but I still find it a reasonably good resource.

 Although the way things are going, I'm half tempted to get offline all together... Ugh.

 Right-click to download and save at full resolution

I really like a full page. When I was drawing this, the orange outfit came together easily but it would have left a lot of empty space. Instead of just rolling with it, I drew a second outfit. 

I loved the idea of a bat pattern AND a bat corset, so I went with both! If you like my bat pattern and you want to try it out for yourself, grab my bat Procreate brush here.

And go check out what Rachel has been up to! Her little poems are an adorable addition to her costumes!  

Frightful Frocks: Moth Queen

 Next up in the Frightful Frocks project is the moth queen! Rachel has been busy posting her fabulous Bianca Boo. She's great at crafting a character for her paper dolls. I am not! I'm not really a character artist kind of person. There are rarely any kind of deep stories to go along with my paper dolls. It's usually more of an artistic challenge: how do I work on color or a certain time period or how to I illustrate this or that or whatever. It's really a visual expression more than a story.

Anyway. 

Today we have a moth queen. I didn't really know what direction to take this in. I liked the colors of the luna moth. 

 Look at this! I would not come up with this palette on my own. Green, purple, a little yellow, a pinkish-white - it's terrific. I started sketching with no clear idea. I wanted the antennae to be a crown and I wanted the wings to be either a sleeves or a cape.

 Right-click to download and save at full resolution.

What I ended up with feels right out of Star Wars! Does anyone else see Queen Amidala in this?! I initially wanted a much more form-fitting dress but it didn't look quite right with the pose. Honestly, I wish I had gone with a different pose right at the beginning but here we are... Is this frightening? Not really. But it is otherworldy! 

Come back tomorrow for more from me & Rachel! 

Frightful Frocks: Vampire Aristocrat

 In today's installment of Frightful Frocks, we have a vampire aristocrat. I wasn't sure where to go with this so I through the term "aristocrat fashion" into Google and apparently, "aristocrat" is a whole subgenre of Lolita. That didn't really help me much. There was, however, a picture that popped up of a German aristocratic lady.

 The sleeves on this are just excellent. And the colors are great! This became the jumping off point for my outfit. I thought a bit about what an immortal vampire lady of fashionable taste would wear - maybe she would keep her favorites around for centuries! 

Right-click on the image to save it at full size

Grab the doll here 

 I liked the huge, gathered sleeves but I toned it down a bit. A jaunty hat (and a face with tiny fangs!), two skirts, and our vampire is ready for the 15th century or the 21st! I'm not crazy about how the shoes on the short skirt came out - they're a bit goofy.

Rachel has her take on Vampire Aristocrat and it's terrific! Her outfit definitely taps into that Lolita vibe.  She's including a poem every day which gives her set a nice storybook quality.  

We're posting these all the way up to Halloween, so check back every day for more!  

Frightful Frocks: Halloween Paper Dolls

Earlier this fall, Rachel of Paperthin Personas asked me if I'd like to jump into another Halloween paper doll series. We've done a few over the years, so of course I was on board! She came up with a great set of themes and we both got to work. Hers went up yesterday (you can see it here) and here's mine, a little late with time zones, etc, etc! 

 

Right-click to download the full size image

 

The dress on the base doll is based on a 1950s dress I saw on Pinterest. It's dramatic and chic and vintage - what's not to love?!

The first theme is "poison bottles". I love the green color of antique bottles and the stylized skulls on the labels. I decided to make the whole dress a poison bottle! The dress has sort of an 18th century vibe but a little bit of 19-teens too. 

 My plan for this series is to use as little black as possible! It's easy to default to a black-orange-red-lime green-and maybe purple kind of palette for Halloween. There WILL be black, of course. Some of the themes (bats, for example) would really need to be black, but where it's possible, I'm going to push other colors. 

Follow along with us as we tackle the same theme list with different styles and dolls! 

Happy October!

I seem to start every post with something like "Well, life just got busy..." etc, etc. And that's true. Life got a bit busy. I lost a good chunk of September to a lingering cough. The kids went back to school, immediately brought home a cold, and we were all miserable. I had it the longest, naturally. But I'm on the mend and getting back into the groove of things. 

I have a one-page paper doll to share today. I'll have more as the month goes on, but I really wanted to share this now. 

 

Right-click to download and save for printing

This one is a little bit different! Cut along the dotted lines so that the little ghost can hold the cauldron, treat bag, pumpkin spice boba, skull, and pumpkin. There's also a witch hat, sparkly "hair" bow, and hipster hat to round out the looks. I couldn't come up with a clever title - I almost called it "Boo to You" but that was kind of meh.

I'm also trying out an art challenge on Instagram, so you're welcome to follow me there! Have fun with my little ghostie!!    

A Very Flapper Halloween - New Paper Doll Book!

 Just a quick post today! I'm wrapping up some projects and hopefully that'll open up a little time for the ol' blog. I do have a tiny thing planned for October so watch for that at the very least.

Speaking of October...

My newest book is available for preorder! You can grab it here. And if you're thinking, wait a minute...that looks really familiar... YES! I created a smaller version of this last October. Sometimes I fall in love with a project and just expand on it until it feels really & truly complete. This was one of those. It started as a paper cut project for the 2024 paper doll convention, then it became a mini series on the blog, and now, it's a book! I really enjoyed putting together a Halloween costume book that was more than just traditional costumes. And bright colors were important as well. 

Anyway, I hope you all love it as much as I do. All the thanks to Jenny Taliadoros who is the PERFECT person for collaboration.  

Happy Campers in Doll Castle News

This post is going to be a short & sweet kind of post. Summer has been BUSY! Two weeks ago we took a little mini vacation to Connecticut with my parents. We saw Weird Al in concert at Foxwoods and then spent the rest of the weekend visiting the Mystic Aquarium and Mystic Seaport Museum. We all had an excellent time! Apparently the Captain Underpants theme song really resonates with the Gen Z crowd! My kids lost their minds over that and so many Weird Al tunes. It really was a blast.

Today I want to share a little project that will likely become a bigger project. A few months ago, the folks at Doll Castle News reached out about making a paper doll for their centerfold. Sounded like fun to me! We went with a camping theme: 

If you're a Doll Castle News subscriber, you've already got your copy. If you aren't, individual issues and subscriptions are available at Doll Castle News.  Thanks to Doll Castle News for highlighting my art!

Enjoy the rest of your summer :) I cannot believe it's already AUGUST!!  
 

The Technology of Tabs

I hope everyone is having a happy summer! Clearly I've been a bit busy and neglecting the ol' blog. My oldest son is working this summer but he's too young to drive so this mom is making the commute with him. It's like 15 minutes. Not a big deal but it does mean I plan my day around it. He's happy, I'm happy. It's all good! 

Today I want to share a little bit about making tabs for paper dolls digitally. I recently wrote an article for Paperdoll Review on the subject of tabs. If you're a subscriber, you should already have it. If you are not, you can grab single copies (or subscribe!) online at Paperdoll Review. I'm not going to repeat what's in the article but rather dive in a bit about the technology of tabs.

I add my tabs using Photoshop. This will also work with Photoshop Elements and should work with just about any version of Photoshop. In a 300 dpi document, I make my tabs using the vector rectangle tool with a fill of white and a black 2pt stroke (highlighted in yellow in the image below). If I'm working in a 600 dpi document, I usually use a 4pt stroke.

Most of my tabs are created this way. Sometimes, though, I need a different shape and that's the triangle tab. You can do this a few different ways.

Method 1: Create a rectangle tab with the vector rectangle tool and then click on it with the Direct Select tool (white arrow). This will highlight the four vector nodes. You can then click on one and move it around. You may see a pop up asking you if you want to change a live shape into a regular path - yes, you do! In the image below, I modified one edge with the Direct Select tool.

Method 2: You can use the Pen Tool. Take the Pen Tool (it looks like a pen!) and click nodes onto the canvas where ever you would like to create the tab. Each node can be modified with the Direct Select tool. I don't really like this method. There's less control and it can be a bit sloppy.

Method 3: CUSTOM SHAPE TOOL!! This is clearly my favorite way. Right click on the vector rectangle tool and it will reveal several other vector shape options. The last one is the custom shape tool. You can use this to drag out a shape. 

 

But how do you make a custom shape? Honestly, I don't remember! I know I made the triangle tab in Illustrator and brought it into Photoshop years ago. (If anyone wants a tutorial on that, I'm sure I could cook one up.) Lucky for you, you can just grab mine. 

I've made a public folder with my tabs and base shapes on my Google drive. They are available as an Illustrator file (.ai), a Photoshop shapes file (.csh), an EPS file, SVG file, and a PNG image. For Photoshop, download the .csh file, double-click on it, and it should be added to your custom shape menu. Any questions, just pop them into the comments.

But what about Procreate or other art software? I don't recommend adding tabs in Procreate. If folks are interested in a Procreate tutorial, I can write one up. If you have other software options, use those! Procreate isn't really good at this task. Affinity would probably work but I haven't tried it. Essentially, any software that has a vector shape option is going to be your best bet. Krita has it, but I haven't really learned how to use it well yet. GIMP and other Photoshop clones might work, too.   

Hopefully this dive into Photoshop is helpful! If you have software suggestions, let me know and I'll check them out. In the meantime, grab the Summer Fun doll from my article! 

 

Emma McKay Everday Paperdoll Book

Just a quick update this week! The teens just finished school so we're having a low-key transition to summer. My youngest had his braces removed (YAY!!!) so he's eating all the candy he can find. My oldest started a summer job and that's been great. And I'm transitioning to Summer Mom, sleeping in and planning fun times :)

 If you're looking for something fun to do this summer, either for yourself or kiddos, check out Emma McKay! If this looks familiar, it's because this was my 2025 calendar but now it's in book form! 

I loved this project so much that I really wanted to see it in book form, too. Paperdoll Review books are just always terrific! The calendar is great, of course, but having it in a book is just so much more convenient! Grab a copy today and if you cut it our, I'd love to see it!
 

Coloring Tamara the Ballerina in Krita

First up, happy June, happy Pride, happy end of the school year! I'm SO ready to be "Summer Mom". Summer Mom does not set an alarm. Summer Mom goes to the lake and the ocean and the museums. Summer Mom plans fun activities and random lunches. Summer Mom is GREAT, for all of us. Things will be a little bit different this year. My oldest got his very first summer job. He's already started working on the weekends and seems to be enjoying it. Next year my youngest will be old enough to join him. That will be a whole new experience for all of us! I'm less in the "existential dread" phase of parenting now. Last year was tough on me and last summer felt like an ominous LAST SUMMER. This year, not so much. My kids are good people. What more can I ask for?! (I mean, taking care of their own dishes would be great...)

This week, while the kids are still in school, I decided to jump into Krita. If you didn't see it last week, I tested out a feature in Krita where I easily extracted the line art from from an image. I was VERY impressed. Sometimes free or open source or cheap software is, well, not great. I was so impressed with the line art extraction that I decided to color the whole page in Krita.

I wanted to try Krita because it's open source. One of my core beliefs about art is that it's ALWAYS accessible. All you really need is a way to make marks and a surface to place those marks. That's it. Paper and pencil - great. Paint and canvas - also great. Tablet and software - find a price point that works for you and go for it. Most of us have some kind of computing device at this point. I work on a refurbished iPad Pro, an XP-Pen Artist Pro 24 inch monitor on a gaming PC, and, lest we forget, a very expensive and stupid all-apps Adobe subscription. That's my setup today but I've worked with a lot less in the past.

And you can, too. 

This is where I left off last week. I had Tamara the Ballerina from Paperdoll Review ready to color. Line art on one layer, ready to go. I'll admit to a bit of a learning curve with Krita. It's a bit different than Photoshop or Procreate, or other drawing software that I've used. Not TOO different but enough. I played around with it for 15 minutes or so, just to get a feel for it. I stuck to default brushes and colors for this run-through.

I tinkered with the workspace a bit until I found a configuration I was happy with. I like my swatches and brushes on the left and my layers on the right. I don't know why. I just do! I also started closing panels that I didn't need in the right-hand side of the screen. The color palette that I used is the Concept Cookie swatches but there are other palettes available. Brushes are awesome! There are loads of default brushes and I just kept playing with them until I found ones I sort of liked. None of the default brushes felt quite like the ones I use in Procreate or Sketchbook Pro but they were nice regardless. I found myself blending which isn't normally something I do and I'm not crazy about it.

This is a fault with me, not Krita. I'm sure I could replicate my workflow using either default tools or community tools. There's a thriving Krita community worth checking out.

 

Here's a close-up of my unblended colors. Once I did blend them they were a bit too smooth. That got better as I continued to try other tools. 

Here's the doll, colored and blended. I redrew the lips on a layer above the line art. Black lips bother me! 

At first, Krita felt kind of meh. The rotation dials on my monitor didn't work. Almost all of the shortcuts were different but also logical so that was ok. The eyedropper/color picker is P instead of I. The bucket fill is F instead of G. And so on. Also, I had to dig for a few things, like the hue/saturation. Once I found it, it was great and worked well. This wasn't a Photoshop or Procreate replacement. 

The game changer, though, was accidentally right-clicking on my mouse.

I'm kind of retro - I like having a keyboard and mouse along with my drawing tablet. I rarely use the buttons on my stylus, whether it's on my PC or on my iPad. So while I was scrolling along, I accidentally right-clicked and this fantastic wheel popped up. I have never seen anything like this! 

Here's an image from the Krita user manual showing all of the details. The manual has a whole section about using Krita after using other software, like Photoshop. It's great! 

This little wheel does everything! Wanna rotate your canvas? Drag the little slider at the top. Toggle colors - that's tucked into the back. A mini color picker wheel, color history, favorite (or recent? I'm not sure) brushes....this thing had it ALL! The only thing I couldn't really do from here was set the blend mode of my brushes and that was barely an issue. Once I found this, my whole workflow sped up significantly!

And if that wasn't enough, there are also vector tools for adding tabs! I didn't use that this time. I will in the future.  

 So the TL;DR on Krita:

 Pros:

• Great default color palettes
• A nice variety of interesting brushes
• Straightforward and customizable interface with more tools than I'll ever need! 
• Easily extract line art onto a transparent background
• Vector tools
• Broad compatibility, available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and there might be a clunky Android port although it isn't available for iPad so that might be a con for some 
• POP-UP PALETTE! 
• PRICE is FREE!  

Cons (all very minor):

• Shortcuts are different if you've used other software, like Photoshop. Easy to figure out and re-learn
• Large, many-paneled interface can be a bit confusing but adapts with ease
• Adjustments are under the Filters menu and tools in general might not be where you would expect them to be
• Vector tools are not exactly intuitive and I need to experiment with that some more 

This is really the first open source art software that I can see myself really getting into. If you have a Mac or PC and a drawing tablet of any sort, check it out. If you do try it, let me know what you think!   

   

Extracting Lineart with Krita

I've been lucky enough to collaborate with artists and art estates over the last few years. One thing I've done quite a bit is digitally coloring lineart. The first of these was Stripes! by David Wolfe which I colored in Sketchbook Pro on my Surface Pro 3.

I've colored several books with Brenda Sneathen Mattox, including one of her lovely brides, which was colored in Procreate on my iPad.

You can see these and more collaborations (as well as my paper dolls) at Paperdoll Review.

One of the challenges with coloring projects is how to work with the lineart. The obvious answer is to set lineart to Multiply on one layer, and color underneath it. And that's often ok. But other times, I need to have more flexibility. Sometimes I go through the somewhat tedious process of masking away the white of the page but I leave the white within the lineart. It takes time but it's worth it when I need to color, tab, and layout. I like to have my line art for each individual outfit organized into groups in Photoshop: lineart on one layer with colors in layers under that (often in a sub-group) and then tabs, also contained in a group.

It sounds WAY more complicated than it actually is! 

I've been looking for a better way to extract lineart and I think I stumbled upon a great shortcut in an app ("program" for the elder millennials and older, like me!!) called Krita. 

Krita is an open-source art app available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Yes, even Linux! What that means is it's FREE! I'll admit, I don't know much about it because I'm just starting tinkering with it, but what I've seen so far is pretty great. In less than a minute (LITERALLY), I can extract line art onto a transparent layer.

I'm using the Tamara the Ballerina freebie from Paperdoll Review to test this out. If you also end up coloring this, send it over to Jenny at Paperdoll Review (info@paperdollreview.com). She'd love to see it! 

Anyway, I grabbed the PDF from Paperdoll Review. I was able to open the PDF directly in Krita without going through the process of extracting the image in Adobe Acrobat, so that was already a time-saver. Not every art app can directly open a PDF. Just open Krita, go to File>Open and search for your file. 

Once open, go to Filter>Colors>Colors to Alpha. You'll see a pop-up color picker. I don't know what that does yet...I just leave it on default. Click Ok and you'll have black lineart on a transparent layer.

Here's a close-up at about 200% zoom. Look at how great that is!! It seriously took longer to write about it than it did to do it. Maybe there's an easy way to do the same thing in Photoshop but I haven't found it yet. I've tried using Channels but that just doesn't quite work for me. There are still some stray marks and some of the paper texture is still visible if you look really closely. Overall, though, I think this might become a regular part of my art arsenal. And for FREE! I cannot emphasize that enough! Digital art should be accessible and apps like this really help level the playing field.  

Will you try Krita? Should I color in this lovely lady and learn how to use Krita at the same time? The answer is OF COURSE I should, so stay tuned for that. 

And thank you to Paperdoll Review for this beautiful freebie!  Happy coloring :)

 

Morgantown 2025

What a fun time! The Morgantown paper doll party was a blast! This year's theme was Think Pink. I drove down on Thursday to visit with Jenny and a bunch of other early birds. Friday was a day spent out & about with the actual party on Saturday.

 

Jenny and I shared a table. I didn't have a lot of new art this time. It's been a bit hectic lately but I do have some things in the works...! I never take enough pictures at these events - I'm always busy catching up with old friends and making new friends. This time was no different! 

I was asked to design the souvenir doll, which was great fun! Jayne Keller created a black & white coloring sheet as well as the dress-a-doll. Linda Ocasio wrote up a very nice essay on the color pink. The whole day was very well organized and oodles of fun. 

Each table at lunch had a lovely centerpiece designed by Andrea Johnson. I was the lucky winner of the one at our table! How fantastic is this?! 

I'm not a big collector, although I always seem to come home with treasures! Working from right to left here's what I picked up. First, Laura and Sara had a lovely tribute for Ralph included a reprint of one of his paper dolls for all of us. Kwei-Lin had a funky and fun freebie sheet as well as a coloring station. Next, is a Peck-Gandre Alice in Wonderland. I have a growing collection of Peck-Gandre/Peck-Aubrey paper dolls that I wanted as a kid and never got! The artist, Linda Peck, has a website where she sells digital downloads. In the back row, I found two "around the world" themed paper dolls: Children 'Round the World (reproductions are available at Paperdoll Review) and Dress Up for the World's Fair. Next, a really cute book of School Children, with six dolls. In front of that, two pantine/jointed dolls by Mercury Nightstone, who joined us for the first time at the party! And finally, the souvenirs in a cute bag. 

 

I also have a Golden Magazine in excellent shape from the freebie table and an immaculate copy of Dolls and Doll Houses from 1959. I love paper doll how-to books and kits. Despite the fact that the paper doll section of this one is slim, I still needed it! 

Let's take a closer look at some of these fun goodies! 

This is the back and front cover of School Children from 1975. These dolls are delightfully adorable and retro and I am in love1

A close-up of Nancy, one of the six paper dolls on the back cover.

The interior has this great grid layout on every page. It's so simple but so clever! It feels more like a 1960s book than a mid-70s book so maybe it's a reissue. Regardless, I love this style! 

Next up, Dress Up for the World's Fair.

This book commemorates the 1964-1965 World's Fair in New York. I immediately loved the cover! The typography, the art, the layout - it's all terrific. 

The dolls are Peter and Wendy. Is that an accident or a reference to Peter Pan? Either way, I really like this art style as well.

I love the detail in all of the world costumes. Each page also includes photos of actual buildings or exhibits from the World's Fair. Even the handwriting is wonderful!

And finally, a quick peek at the Golden Magazine.

I haven't seen many Golden Magazines. There were before my time! But every one of them is full of amazing illustrations. I would have LOVED this as a kid! 

 

Mother's Day is this weekend, so here's a "ham" loaf recipe! As far as vintage 60s recipes go, I've seen worse!  It's kid-friendly for sure.

 

And this amazing calendar at the end!

 

Oh, and one more thing...

 

I know she's a bit shiny, but Mercury's alien doll and No AI Art sticker both have a home on my cork board! Fabulous!