December Paper Doll - Outfit 2 in Red

And here's a red jacket! I thought light jeans with that bold red jacket would look great, and I love the results.  The textures I used were found online.  I wish I had kept better track of the textures I used so that I could direct people to the sources....

I find working with Photoshop to be very different than Illustrator, specifically working with patterns.  With Illustrator, I can add patterns to a shape's appearance and layer these within the Appearance panel.  I can scale and rotate these patterns easily.  Photoshop....well, it's a bit tougher.  Scaling is simple enough.  Rotating isn't.  I take individual segments of patterns and rotate them as needed and merge layers, etc.  It gets complicated.  But it's worth it in the end!

A new green outfit will be up tomorrow, and a pdf at the end of the month!

December Paper Doll - Outfit 2 in Green

Today's outfit is a winter jacket with jeans.  I love pea coats and double-breasted wool coats.  For the better part of a decade, I have owned various versions of this jacket.  I love green and I love wool coats.  When I see a green wool coat (the brighter, the better!) I need to own it.

I also love wearing a scarf.  My mother loves to crochet and has been making be scarves for ages.  I love them all.  Naturally, this jacket needed a scarf!

Look for the red version of this tomorrow and a pdf at the end of the month!

December Paper Doll - Outfit 1 in Red

Here's the red version of yesterday's outfit.  I didn't want each outfit to be exactly the same with just a small color change. I thought the red outfit would look great with a dark grey trim & boots instead of the white I used on the green outfit.

And I have to say that the fur was fun to paint, too.  The newest version of Photoshop has a lot of natural brush settings that I played with throughout this project.  This was the beginning of that.

Tomorrow is a green outfit with a pdf at the end of the month!

December Paper Doll - Outfit 1 in Green

We've got the first outfit for the December holiday paper doll today!

I don't have any reason for starting with the green outfit, really.  Part of my plan for this series is to experiment with real-world textures in Photoshop.  This is a subtle tartan pattern I found online.  I wish I had the time to create all of the patterns and textures that I use.  Realistically, I just don't. This was a pattern that caught my attention so I used it.  Tomorrow will be the red version and there will be a pdf at the end of the month!

Happy December!

It's December...already.  I can't believe how quickly this year has gone by.  I feel like I just created the Kawaii Kids paper dolls!

This year, I decided to create a color set of paper dolls.  I typically post a black & white set in December, partly because colored dolls take a lot more effort and partly because coloring sheets are a lot of fun for the kiddos. This year I wanted to practice my Photoshop skills with my new-ish Surface.  I think it was a good choice, and I hope all of you out there think so too.

I also wanted to create two dolls with a wardrobe to share.  I thought about a mix & match set but found myself struggling with it.  Instead, I create entire outfits.  And because this is the most stressful time of the year for me, I only came up with 15 outfits instead of the 30 I was shooting for. I'm actually pretty happy about that - it forced me to do a little problem solving.

What I decided to do was create two dolls, one with a red color scheme and one with a green color scheme.  Same outfits, different colors. All of the outfits will fit both dolls.  I tried to limit any skin tones in the images to make them as interchangeable as possible.

I'm really excited about this set and it's a style I'll work with again soon.  I'll post an outfit a day (in jpg format) with a wrap-up pdf of everything at the end.

So Happy December! Whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, start your celebrations with this paper doll set. Enjoy!

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