Today, just a lovely fashion plate from the February 1862 edition of Le Follet.

I absolutely adore the purple gown with the black sleeves. It looks deliciously sumptuous! Click on the image to see the details better. I like the black gown too, but the copper or brown underskirt seems strange to me (though it does match the muff).

Winter styles have always appealed to me more than other seasons.

And the girl's matching blue booties are also very sweet.

Totally awesome 1841 set of paper dolls on auction through Theriault's. Described as "very rare" with a title: Mythologie Pour La Jeunesse. This set was made in Vienna by H.F. Muller. It includes two dolls (male and female), and 14 stunning costumes representing various Greek and Roman deities.  The auction site describes the folio as beautifully marbled with applique on the "mythologie" scroll. This set was intended to be fun and educational and came with a "72 page book, written in both German and French, detailing the writer's purpose: to teach mythology to his children by means of paper dolls with changeable costumes that represent the features of various Greek or Roman Gods."

Don't know how much something like this will go for at auction, but it being such a lovely complete set in such nice condition, I'm sure it will go dear! 

Amazing colors! Wish we could better see the male doll ~ his little head is peeking out above the short yellow toga roughly in the middle at the bottom.  Click the image to see more detail!

Volume 26 didn't have much to offer for April, so we're leaping here from the end of March to the beginning of May. The sorta militaristic theme of the Bank Holiday costume is common in this series (it's the third example of this style I have posted already!), but I love how this one has a keg with it. The May costume is just simple, floral, and fun ~ love both the hat and the patterned stockings. Some of these costumes are rather risque for the period (short skirts and a lot of leg!).

I am going to focus on these Judy costumes and on sharing my rather extensive collection of other artists' work for a spell while I rethink what to do with the Reconstruction dolls. I do love the style of these Judy dolls and her clothes are fun to make because I can produce them fairly quick and I am not agonizing over colors (you can do that with your own markers, pencils, etc.). Click the image to download the .pdf, and select "Judy" from the categories on the left if you need to find the original doll again. Have fun!

The worst part of not having a scanner for all those weeks and falling into a funk is that I spent a lot of time thinking. This is an unfortunate business, of course, because thinking invariably leads to re-thinking, and subsequently revising. I love my water color paper dolls, but they give me anxiety for whatever reason. I seem to approach working on them with dread, which is the opposite of what making paper dolls should mean to me (and what it has always been in the past: a contemplative de-stressor). So when the think you love causes more stress than what it's supposed to alleviate, it's definitely time to reevaluate it.

Part of what causes so much stress is that it feels so time-consuming (even though it's really not ~ I can paint a page in under two hours; under one if it's not terribly complex). So even though it takes as long as it takes, it feels long and that's another good indicator that I'm not enjoying it as I should be.

I drew the dolls above over the last week; five last weekend and five today. I don't doubt I could produce clothing for all of them over the next two days (and then some). It would basically mean getting very well ahead of the last effort, which has taken me almost six months, in a matter of weeks.

I computer colored these because I have not decided whether to color them, how the color them, or leave them black & white. I do like the option of letting other people color them, so the original artwork is all simple ink.

I am shy here of a few characters I had previously painted (like Razi-el, Henry and Buster), but have added Eulalia and Peg & John Stewart Preston.  You can click the image and see them a little larger, but since I have not decided what to do with them, I'm not making them the official choice until I can get some perspective.

If I stick with these, I can produce work quickly, which ostensibly means I can post more. Doesn't that sound like a good deal?

I dunno. Most days I just want to retreat into a corner.

The good news (great news!) is that I finally have a new scanner (huzzah!). The not-so-great news is that I have not really been doing much in the down time, so I haven't got tons of new things to share with you (though I had hoped to). It's just amazing to me how much I can let technology cripple me sometimes ~ hence my Luddite tendencies.

But anyway, here's some new Judy costumes (still from Volume 26, but appropriate for the month, so that worked out). Have no idea what onions have to do with Saint David (that's what I believe that thing on the first dress is). The Spring Costume is likewise fanciful with carrots and a bird's nest for a hat. I think I mentioned this before, but the artist gets sillier and sillier the longer the feature runs, so you can expect all shades of crazy as I continue.

Today, a lovely European paper doll on auction at eBay. Because the title is in multiple languages, it's hard to know its place of origin. I am going to guess German because German is the first language represented on the box. The seller thinks it's French.

Either way, we both agree that it's from the 1850s and it's lovely! Has a few other dresses and some hats, but this is the best representative image and besides, that decorative box is just way cool. Typical of the style of that era, this doll is printed both front and back and pieces like the veil shown here go over the head and around the shoulders; sometimes these designs were wonderfully complex for playthings; but cheap paper dolls were still another decade or so away, so the rich little girls who played with these expected the full monty (so to speak).

UPDATE: This auction ended on 3/9 and netted $431.99!