Paper doll hacks?

March 8, 2013 9:23 PM

I got my little girl some punch-out paper dolls with gobs of different clothing options. Unfortunately, the dolls are pretty floppy, and the tabs don't do a great job of holding the clothes on. It's nearly impossible for her to actually dress her doll, and she gets pretty frustrated. I've considered adding a sturdy layer to the back of the doll, but I feel that doesn't completely solve the problem. Are there additional hacks I'm not thinking of? Will just having a sturdier doll help the clothes stay on?

I've seen the trick with magnetic sheeting and a cookie sheet, but the thought of hours of painstaking outline cutting (64 pages of clothes and accessories!) really, really doesn't appeal.

Bonus points for other paper doll ideas and tips for my 6-year-old aspiring fashion designer.

posted by moira to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (28 answers total)

What about getting the magnetic sets from Melissa and Doug?
posted by chiababe at 9:26 PM on March 8, 2013

My first inclination would be to try some sticky tack, either on the tabs or on the clothing and just cut off the tabs. Would that work?
posted by Urban Winter at 9:33 PM on March 8, 2013

Yeah, my mom used to put blue tack on the clothes so we could stick them on. Might not be a good idea if your daughter is quite young and/or has long hair, though...
posted by third word on a random page at 9:39 PM on March 8, 2013

I get the nostalgic charm of paper dolls, but if you have a color printer, one possibility might be to let her make selections with online 'paper' doll creators and then print/cut them out to play with.

And I have to say these anime character creators are pretty good. Speaking as a Pokémon fan, this one is amazing.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:43 PM on March 8, 2013

Silly putty - that's what I used when I was a girl.
posted by peacheater at 9:43 PM on March 8, 2013

Hmm, actually it was probably something more akin to blue tack, but it was white. It worked really well.
posted by peacheater at 9:45 PM on March 8, 2013

At the craft store in the scrapbooking section, look for "repositionable adhesive dots." And maybe a Popsicle stick glued/taped to the back of the doll?
posted by cecic at 9:47 PM on March 8, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was going to suggest just laminating/clear contact papering the base doll and using double-sided tape, but I think laminating and those adhesive dots may be a better solution.
posted by cobaltnine at 9:51 PM on March 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

I think you could possible use the velcro spots as undies and affix the other bit to the clothes.
posted by b33j at 10:11 PM on March 8, 2013

You could also lightly spray the clothing undersides with removable adhesive spray or for the less elegant solution rub them with a gluestick and let it dry unattached to anything before using.
posted by vegartanipla at 10:31 PM on March 8, 2013

How old is your daughter? Solutions will depend on her age.

I used to use magnets when I was a girl. Specifically taping a chopped up fridge magnet (the promotional kind with phone numbers on them, that sort of thing) to the clothes, and then just using another magnet to hold it on from the other side. That way I could dispense with crappy tabs altogether.
posted by Jilder at 2:08 AM on March 9, 2013

The tabs themselves worked fine for me, but the dolls were thick thick cardstock.

Let us know what you do that works! Paperdolls are surprisingly fun.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 2:14 AM on March 9, 2013

There are book marks that are basically thin Cardstock with magnets attached available at most chain bookstores. Get her some pretty ones to clip the clothes on, as if they were accessories, or just print out & magnetize your own "jewelry" & "belts" etc to accomplish the same thing.
posted by tilde at 3:53 AM on March 9, 2013

I'm with cecic. Glue dots.
posted by dreamphone at 4:34 AM on March 9, 2013

Lots of great suggestions here for how to attach clothes. For the floppiness, I'd recommend glueing a layer of thin cardboard to the back of the doll. Use an Xacto knife to cut around it afterward.
posted by amaire at 5:48 AM on March 9, 2013

I always glued the pages that my floppier paper doll clothes and dolls were on to a cereal box and then cut them out that way, and cut the tabs maybe an inch long wherever possible. I really loved cutting things out, though, so ymmv.

My parents also got me felt paper dolls. Looking through the felt paper doll options on Amazon, they're pretty bizarre (why do paper dolls need either to be princesses, or to have breasts??), but you may be able to find something you like.

If you're looking for other paper dolls, I really liked the American Girl paper dolls: they are punch-out, they were pretty good-quality cardboard, and they apparently now sell them with reusable adhesive dots *and* exciting scenes. Also a big fan of the Tom Tierney paper dolls, which are more detailed, but need to be cut out. But they're beautiful and I loved making up stories in which the Gibson Girls, the Kennedys, Pavlova and Nijinsky, and the Pioneer Family hung out.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:10 AM on March 9, 2013

Response by poster: My little girl is 6. She very explicitly wants to learn fashion design, so I got her the most varied, fashion-forward set I could find (which had a review raving about how sturdy they were!). I imagine she'll be making her own clothes for the dolls soon if she finds it a fun rather than frustrating exercise.

The dolls and clothes are made of thin, glossy cardstock.

I'm so very uncrafty, so I'm not familiar with most of the materials mentioned here. With the glue and tacky stuff, will the clothes be okay stored with each other? I'm concerned about more permanent stickage and tearing.

Would laminating be for stiffness, or for surface?
posted by moira at 7:56 AM on March 9, 2013

Response by poster: And if I laminated, would a do-it-yourself stick-on laminate be sufficient?
posted by moira at 8:02 AM on March 9, 2013

To make the tabs hold better, extend them by taping longer bits of stiff paper to them. If you don't laminate, you can make the doll's structure more solid by cutting out in Bristol board or even a notebook cover a shape just short of its edges, not an exact outline, but sort of the general form, making sure to include the lowest edge. This gives the figure a kind of spine. Attach that to the back. (I don't know what stick-on laminate would do, because I've never used it -- sorry.)
posted by Francolin at 8:20 AM on March 9, 2013

I always cut the tabs off the clothes and used Silly Putty to stick the clothes to the dolls. Works really, really well and you just store the Silly Putty in the egg it comes in when she's finished for the day.

Also, as a like-minded budding fashionista at the same age, I could NOT get enough of my Fashion Plates. I would spend HOURS with them. I still haven't actually forgiven my mother for selling the set in a garage sale when I was at college. Melissa & Doug makes a similar product.
posted by cooker girl at 9:10 AM on March 9, 2013

I used to tape toothpicks to the back of my paper dolls to make them stand up straight. Cheap, easy, effective.
posted by heyho at 11:15 AM on March 9, 2013

You can get a glue stick made of the temporary sort of adhesive that's on Post-It notes. The paper pieces might stick together during storage, but it wouldn't be permanent or damaging.
posted by Corvid at 12:43 PM on March 9, 2013

This doesn't help solve the paper doll issue but have you heard of a toy called Woodkins? My budding fashionista loves it because you can layer different materials to make dresses, skirts, tops, belts, etc. You can cut your own little swatches of fabric when you get tired of the ones it comes with. It's an easy toy to use and very satisfying.
posted by biscuits at 2:17 PM on March 9, 2013

You can take this post with you to the craft store, they can "translate" for you.

I thought of something else - get some powerful mini magnets & glue them to fake jewels - accessories that hold the clothes on.
posted by tilde at 3:57 PM on March 9, 2013

What biscuits said--I saw a plastic fabric-based toy that was similar in Walgreens the other day, and though I wasn't a particularly girly kid, I would have loved it (I was really into that Fashion Plates template-based toy when I was little, and real cloth would have been even better!).
posted by wintersweet at 6:49 PM on March 9, 2013

My mom gave me sticky tack when I was a kid, aka Blutack, as others have suggested above. To answer your question, it will be fine for the long term health of the dolls. It's sticky, but more cohesive than adhesive, so you just rub/roll it off after and store the clothes as you are now, sticky tack-free.

As for standing the dolls up, in my experience, both as a kid thirty years ago and more recently with my own daughter, paper dolls just don't. Even using bristol board to reinforce the dolls, and a wider bristol board base, they're just tippy. Doesn't take much of a breeze to knock them over. Unless you really want to get into it and build a seriously large base--which, if you're not crafty, you probably don't--she's kind of stuck having to hold them up in her hands to make them walk around and talk to each other, like with a Barbie.
posted by looli at 7:50 PM on March 9, 2013

Cut out the tabs longer and thicker. Or mini-paperclips in colors to match the clothes. In, let's say, 1982, colored paperclips were just becoming available where I lived...now there is a much bigger selection.
posted by skbw at 7:39 AM on March 10, 2013

Hmm, I think a sticky tack like blu tak is going to be best for a kid that age. Just laminate the lot, that way you don't have to worry about the dolls getting stuck together permanently.
posted by Jilder at 8:40 AM on March 10, 2013