Making Paper Dolls

Yes, among my most disturbing artistical habits is my obsession with handcrafting paper dolls out of images that were not meant to be paper dolls. And if you look carefully you can see at least three that look like they were taken from one of those cardboard books of antique paper dolls that you used to be able to buy from Dover Press. But, in truth, I took those three (Actually four, but one got knocked on the floor and stepped on in the night) from a digital ad online, blew them up, modified the images with colored pencil and scissors, and then used both the scanner and my printer to turn them into paper dolls put together with scissors, cardboard, and glue.

There are also three in the back row, Annette with mouse ears, the boy on the bicycle, and the fairy-faun thing, which I made with my own original drawings. There’s also cowgirl Annette made from scans from a vintage Cheerios box and a little anthropomorphic puppy-boy thing that was made from a scrapbook piece that my mother cut out of one of my beginning reader books from the 1950s.

These three that were in front in the previous picture were images stolen from a fellow artist on Instagram whose name forgetful me lost in the creation of the paper dolls. I swear I meant to give her proper credit, and I will add her to the comments here when I can find her again on Instagram or Twitter. In the meantime, I contend I am not violating her copyright because I make no money from my blog, and the art project they are a part of will never be sold. When I die, my wife will either give them away or destroy them. She doesn’t tend to value my artwork. The paper dolls especially. The nudist ones especially specially.

I admit that the paper doll thing is only a part of my greater doll-collecting mania. They have taken over the upstairs of the house. And that is a large part of why my wife hates them, although she enjoyed about a decade’s worth of collecting Barbie dolls before our daughter was old enough to dismember and eat so many of them.

But I also have plans to make more. Truly evil plans.