Make Your Own Paper Doll Set

If you loved paper dolls as a young girl chances are your daughter will love them too. You can easily make her a set using ordinary things from around the house, rather than going out and purchasing special materials. Paper dolls are paper, after all, and there are many sources of paper already in your home.

Of course, you can draw dolls and clothes with tabs, hats and shoes and other accessories, but there’s no need to go through all that trouble. Instead, get out some fashion catalogs and get busy cutting images from them.

Fashion magazines contain many pictures of fashionable women in various poses. Tear the pages out, mount them to cardboard, and trim. The best paper dolls will be cut from thick paper that won’t show glue marks from the other side. Glue the shapes to cardboard then cut around them to make the dolls. Rather than cut individual legs, though, cut across from one leg to the other so there will be one solid piece of cardboard between the feet. This is important if you’re going to make a stand for the dolls.

To make the dolls stand up cut a slit in the cardboard, between the feet. Cut a small piece of cardboard, about two inches long, and make it the shape of half a circle. Turn the half circle to where the straight piece is facing the floor. Push the small piece of cardboard into the slit between the feet, centering it in the middle, to form a stand for the doll.

You can have tons of accessories for the dolls by using fashions shown in magazines as well. Cut out pictures of dresses, shirts, jeans and accessories. Make sure to cut the tabs that hold the clothes onto the paper dolls. Shirts and dresses should have a tab on each shoulder and one at each side. Pants should have a tab on each side of the hips then one on the outside of each leg as well as one on the inside of each leg. Accessories, like purses, generally have one tab to hold them onto the hand.

Use thicker cardboard for the dolls than what you use for the clothing. It’s not mandatory that the clothing have cardboard on the backside but with out it, you might be able to see the pictures on the opposite side. Pictures cut from the cover of magazines, where the paper is much thicker, are the best ones for the dolls and their clothes. You can even use a poster of the Taj Mahal or another famous landmark as the backdrop for the dolls.

You can also cut other things out to go with the paper dolls, such as a dog, a vehicle, a picture of a house, trees, and other items. Be sure and find a box or another suitable container for the pieces since they’re easily torn or bent. With good storage the dolls will last a long, long time.