Crafty Friday: Paper Dolls

When my daughter was five years old, she made a paper doll out of construction paper and countless outfits for this doll. She spent so much time creating different articles of clothing and accessories, including cell phones and hair bows. Three years later, making paper dolls still garners enough excitement and creative juices to keep her occupied for hours. Who knows, maybe I have a little clothing designer in the works.

Here’s what you need:

-construction paper or card stock
-scissors
-glue
-fabric scraps or scrapbook paper
-markers & crayons

To make this project a bit easier, instead of free handing the paper doll shape and clothing, we printed off wonderful templates we found here. We printed them onto a pretty weighty card stock to give the dolls some stability. Then, the cutting begins.

I should note that with younger kids, this project requires a lot of help from a parent with decent scissor skills. I found myself cutting out the majority of patterns, while Finn enjoyed cutting the scraps of paper into even smaller scraps of paper. He then dictated what he wanted me to do and left the room to go play with Legos.

Once all of the templates were cut out, the designing begins! For younger kiddos, crayons, colored pencils, or markers can be used to color the clothing items and draw faces on to the dolls.

If you want to take the project a bit further and do even more cutting, you can decorate the clothing with fabric scraps, or scrapbook paper. The easiest way we found to achieve this was by gluing the paper doll clothing onto the back of the fabric or paper. Then, cut the excess fabric or paper around the template. For the hair pieces, we experimented a with a bit of felt to add texture.

If you want a plethora of outfits, decorate both sides of the clothing to make it reversible [as my daughter cleverly figured out.]

Extra clothing can be made by using the templates as a guideline to get the correct size. Just make sure you leave tabs on the clothing to attach them to the doll. The same goes for accessories. Belts are easily made by cutting a strip of scrapbook paper longer than the waist of the doll.

Once the accessories are made, the fashion show begins.

Happy Crafting!

nessa dee