Kayley Paper Dolls

Our grandaughter, Kayley, visited with us this past weekend. The weather was oppressively warm and the humidity was nearly suffocating so we found it preferable to stay indoors with the A/C and create our own fun and make paper dolls.

I had Kayley change into her swimsuit and I took a full length photo of her standing against a white wall. I uploaded the photo to my laptop and played with the size and printed out two 6" images on regular printer paper. Then I glued the printer paper to a sheet of watercolor paper to give our "dolls" some heft, and when it was dried we cut them out. Kayley, who's eight, was able to cut the outlines of the dolls, but I needed to use an X-Acto knife to cut the areas between her arms and her torso.

After the dolls were cut out is when the fun began. With tracing paper we designed a very fashionable wardrobe for our dolls. Then we chose from the hundreds of art papers in my studio to use as the "fabric" for our designs. Keep in mind, you must allow for "tabs" in order to keep the clothes on the dolls.

This little project kept us busy for two days.We became very adept at designing clothes; but shoes, not so much! You'll notice our dolls remained barefoot.

I then sent her home with an envelope containing one of the dolls and all of the clothes that we made, and another envelope with papers that she had picked from my collection and some tracing paper so she can continue to make clothes at home. I kept one of the dolls so that I can continue to make clothes for her here.

I wish I could take credit for coming up with this amazingly fun project, but I can't. I was inspired by the beautiful book, "Artful Paper Dolls" by Terry Taylor. (See sidebar.)