Animal Walk

New cutie cut-out animals for my shop! I get a kick out of making them all walk in a line, pointy little noses up, round little bellies sticking out. Arms and legs are jointed with paper fasteners (is that what they are actually called? how dull) and can swing back and forth, so these lucky creatures can not only walk, but sit and even dance!

Now available at amandamayart.com!

Casual Clothes for Margot and Sheila

Margot and Sheila have some new clothes!


(download PDF here)

Big sweatshirts are my favorite outfit staple. I like to pair them with leggings or roomy oversized sweatpants. Classy, I know.

Margot and Sheila prefer skirts. The swingy gored skirt is similar to one I bought years and years ago. It is black and super fun to wear, but I have yet to actually wear it out of the house because it is just too tailored to be casual yet too dressy for any of my daily activities. The bobble skirt was inspired by one worn by the pizza maker at one of our fall arts festivals. Her version was black felt with brightly colored felt balls and she wore it with bobbly-frilly felt legwarmers and looked absolutely fabulous as she served up organic woodfire-oven pizza. That is style!

Summer Activities for Margot and Sheila

I bought a few new prismacolor pencils, so I feel more able on the handcoloring these days and thought I'd share a colored version of the newest outfits for Margot and Sheila.


(download PDF of colored outfits here)

The painting outfit is pretty much exactly what I wear when I paint, except my white collared shirt is not quite so pretty anymore. One time I wore my painting clothes out for a margarita lunch with my boss at the art gallery and a lady actually stopped and told me how much she liked my outfit. I don't think she was being facetious, which made me think I could really be on to something. But I haven't painted much lately, so that particular fashion line has yet to be realized.

The bathing suit was a challenge, given that the original dolls are wearing dresses. The solution was to add on a bunch of stuff for the doll to carry, which somehow doesn't make going to the beach look all that relaxing. Oh well. The next dolls will be in their skivvies.

Two New Paper Dolls - Freebies!

I have been enjoying looking at Liana's Paper Doll Blog lately. She is a wizard with those prismacolors, and really creative at coming up with lovely dresses and outfits. So I was inspired in two ways - one, to put up some dolls here for whom I can continue to add clothing (fun!); and two, to do some colored pencil coloring.


Colored pencils really are wonderful, with the shading and the different effects depending on how the point is turned. I haven't used any really since high school when we made a lot of maps and illustrated pages. I think I had forgotten how much patience it takes to color properly with pencils - it is time consuming! But so satisfying in a way I don't think digital can ever really match. So, add a few more levels to my admiration of Liana's drawing skills!


Here are the dolls (or click on the photo for JPG version, lower res, same goes for the clothes below). They have the same bodies so they can share clothes, but two different face and hair options so they can be friends! Their first clothing options are a few little summer dresses, with accessories because purses are fun. You get them in black and white so you can spend some quality time with the colored pencils yourself (or paints, crayons, markers...). I will keep the dolls and their clothing collections over on the right hand side in a new section.


Enjoy!

Peter and Emma Paper Dolls

Another new set of paper dolls - I'm on a roll!

Actually, I have some exciting new ideas so I'm finishing up projects that have been languishing for a while so I can move on, unhindered, to the new ones! These two little pals were drawn quite some time ago, but were never printed and tested until today.


I've named them Emma and Peter. Choosing names for the dolls is fun. Sometime it takes a while, other times the choice is obvious. Names often suggest character traits and personalities to me - I don't know if that is due to past associations or if its just how the letters work together.

May Blossoms

New paper doll alert! I think this one is my new favorite (do I say that every time?). She is sweet and I really love the dress with the flower crown and daisy chain necklace.


I am thrilled about Spring. Every year it just gets better and better, though my mood dependency on the amount of sunshine is becoming a little out of hand. On the dark days it seems to take all I've got to just get out of bed. On the other hand, the sunny days find me dancing and singing and planting tomatoes. Overall, a beautiful and tumultuous time of year!

An Introduction

This is the new paper doll I have mentioned before. She has been ready for a while, but I had to do a final print to make sure the outfits still fit when everything was cut out. And that inexplicably took a while, but now it is satisfactorily taken care of and the new lady is ready to be seen.


She will be in my shop shortly. However, she will be available first at Craft Hope for Haiti, a shop of craft work sold to benefit Doctors Without Borders work in Haiti. The Craft Hope organizers have apparently had an fantastic response from artists and the public, which is so terrific.

There is some lag time in getting items posted, so I am not sure when this doll will be available. Do visit the CraftHope Shop though to see all the other wonderful things that have been created and donated to this cause.

One of those Days...

I had one yesterday. One of those days where you wake up knowing you shouldn't get out of bed, but some ulterior sense of duty forces the situation and you, or in this case, I, found myself at work, after nearly causing a multi-car collision at the post office. I proceeded to destroy our company website, then botch a mass mailing, and then left early before the computers started to actually explode. Gah.

Today, nearly everything was easily corrected, though I am still uncertain how many of the 2,000 mailing list recipients actually heard our important announcement. Norton Anti-Virus self-updating system, I shake my fist at you!

In local news, I have a new paperdoll in the works, something a little different. I'll introduce her here first, so stay tuned!

Introducing Irma

This is Irma, the newest addition to the AmandaMay paper doll collection:



She is just a little shy, but has a vast imagination and can actually be pretty silly.

I am having so much fun making these dolls, especially deciding on fun clothes for them. Irma has a raincoat and a red umbrella, a pink snowsuit (a la A Christmas Story), a fabulous dress up costume, and a couple more...

Next on the drawing board, some more historical style dolls - I'm thinking Renaissance would be really fun - and maybe some fairy tale characters.

Paper Dolls of My Own

Same dolls, new format! I am now offering the dolls found on my Paper Doll Postcards in full-sheet format, starting off with PDF downloads. Each doll has a few extra items of clothing added, and they are a bit bigger than the postcard version. Plus, if you buy a PDF you can print as many as you like!


I do have a new doll in the works, but there is someone living in my studio at the moment, so all new projects have been put on hold. Ever notice how when you are out of reach of supplies, the ideas just swarm like pigeons? Its frustrating. But hopefully, if I write everything down, the minute I get my space back a whirlwind of productivity will ensue. One can dream...

Presidential Paper Dolls

I love Dover. Maybe I have mentioned this before? They have such a terrific selection of paper dolls, and they publish the dolls of Tom Tierney, who is one of my early favorite artists. Yes, I have written about him before, I guess I'm really a fan!

This time, I bring it up because i just saw the Obama Family commemorative dolls. Very neat. The faces are a tad off, which disappoints me a little, but I think they are recognizable. I'm wondering if I should order a set and start a for-real paper doll collection?

Freebie Paper Doll!

I decided to make the Moody Girl paper doll a freebie. No special reason, I just love paper dolls and hope to pass along the many happy hours I had as a child cutting and snipping and making new clothes and houses for the dolls (3-dimensional houses for some reason, but the difference of dimension never bothered us).


There are two pages, the first is the doll and I recommend printing her out on a stiffer paper or cardstock. The second page has three outfits. I also read a lot of comments here about printing on magnets which I have never tried but think is an absolutely fabulous idea.

Here is the pdf:

Paper Doll and clothes

Have fun!!


edited: my technical abilities have improved and I now have the ability to save multi-paged PDFs - imagine! So the doll and clothing are now a single file instead of two. AW 5/09

One of Those Days

Do you ever have those days when everything you see inspires a new project? When your brain just doesn't turn off, ideas are bubbling and overflowing, and you are so tired you can't even figure out how to start?

That is what this evening has been for me, so much I want to do and yet I spent most of it curled up asleep in a chair. Drats.

I did get started on a new paper doll, a Moody Girl.


This is her before she gained color. I outlined her in dark black without thinking, and now I am not sure if I like it. The jury is still out on that one - what do you think?

Feelin' a little space-y here. Perhaps it is time to get some proper sleep.