Collage Couture and Paper Dolls

Several years ago I happened across a book by Julie Nutting titled Collage Couture: Techniques for Creating Fashionable Art and was so struck by the cover, I just had to thumb through it.  Collage dresses! With book pages. Needless to say, it came home with me.

I love collage and book pages, and the idea of combining these into great looking paper dolls and doll clothes appealed to me.  A treasure trove of illustrations and instruction, Collage Couture covers every facet of creating contemporary paper gals  - from proportioning a figure to drawing hair and sketching clothing. How to combine colors and patterns in clothing, techniques for creating backgrounds on canvas to show off the gals, and ideas for using them on cards and gifts are all described in detail. You can see the book on Amazon HERE.

Published in 2010, but as I discovered it, Prima Marketing had released a Julie Nutting stencil for making paper dolls as well as some doll rubber stamps.  I ordered the 12x12 stencil right away, since it meant I didn't have to draw anything (I'm not much of a draw-er). And I started making some gals.

 Stencil and dolls from Prima Marketing website

After getting inspiration from Julie Nutting's videos on the Prima Marketing website and looking around at what other paper artists had made with Julie's stencil on Pinterest, the gal below was my first creation. Made to accompany a christening gift for my friend's granddaughter, I arrived at the party and realized I had forgotten to take a picture of it. With Jane's voice resonating in my head, I propped the orange dotty gal on the seat of my car and preserved her for posterity just few minutes before I gave her away.  I liked how she came out so  . . .

Avery's paper doll

So I made a few more . . . and a few more . . .  gave a few away . . . . a couple went in the garbage because I didn't like their hair or dress or had mucked it up somehow. Drawing hair is a challenge for me . . .

 

By then I had purchased many of the first release of  Julie Nutting doll stamps . . . well, actually, all of them . . .

I liked the jointed dolls so decided to stamp the heads on the script or text paper and then use the template to draw the body to fit the head. Here's two examples. Oops - the head on the gal in the black dotted dress is from a stamp in the next release (yes, I bought more).

 

I have a few jointed gals waiting for garments . . .

Julie Nutting likes to use text or script paper for her dolls and I have followed her example.  In one of her videos Julie mentions she had been a fashion illustrator so she was focused on the garments, rather than the faces. She says she never learned to draw faces to her satisfaction.  Prima Marketing has since released a set of face stamps, but they aren't my cup of tea (below). See what I mean? FYI, that's the Prima Marketing logo over the middle face.

Next time -  a look at the tags I made using stamps from the first release.  Fun!

Cheers!