Easy Paper Dolls With Washi Tape Clothing

This post is sponsored by Cricut.

 

My little girls LOVE Paper Dolls. I carry a set in my bag with my where ever we go in case we get stuck waiting somewhere. They are the perfect creative outlet. I have designed quite a few paper dolls as printables over the years. You can find my basic paper dolls here, my princess dresses here and my paper doll house here. When I heard about Washi sheets (basically a sheet of Washi tape instead of a strip), I knew that I wanted to make doll clothes out of them. They are incredibly easy to make and the perfect doll clothes material because they are sticky on the back but not so sticky they make a mess. My kids are now obsessed with these dolls clothes because they are so easy to use over and over again!

You will need:

• A Cricut Explore ( I use the Explore Air 2)
• Washi Sheets
• Cardstock
• a Laminator
• light stick mat
  

When you open the new Cricut Design Space, it will look like the photo above. The top banner will be followed by projects that you have created. You can see some of my latest projects like the Soccer Shirt I just made for my daughter. Below your projects will be Make It Now Projects, a fun variety of predesigned projects that are great when you are looking for something cute and fast to make. To get started in the New Cricut Design Space, hit the plus sign on the left hand side of your projects or the green New Project button in the top right corner.

After you select New Project, a blank canvas will open up for you. The canvas is a grid, so you will be able to see exactly how big your project is. Each of the little squares is an inch. You have a couple of choices when it comes to adding an image, you can use one of Cricut’s predesigned images most of which are available with Cricut’s subscription program or you can upload your own design. For this simple and easy project, we will be uploading my simple paper doll designs.

To save the paper doll images so you can upload them to Design Space, right click on each of the photos below and hit save as and save them to your desktop.

To upload your own photo to Cricut Design space instead, hit the upload button at the bottom of the left hand menu.   The following screen will pop up, hit the upload image button.

You can either drag and drop your file on the next screen or search for it on your computer by hitting the browse button.

Once you have selected your image, it will pop up in the box on the left hand part of your screen. Select what kind of image it is, a simple image is a image with high contrast colors and a transparent or blank background. A moderately complex image is one with simple details and color. A complex image is one with lost of details and low contrast. For instance the doll below is a simple image because of the white background and the dark, simple lines.

The next screen will pop up, wanting your to erase any parts of your image that you don’t want in the final product. This is when you erase backgrounds and other objects. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can do it the magic wand (it looks like a plus sign on your screen) will try and select the parts you want selected and erased or you can use the eraser (it looks like a circle on your screen) which functions the same way the eraser tool in old school paint did.

Save your image as a cut file and then insert it into your design.

Once you have inserted the image into your project you can resize it and move it around. Resize the image by clicking and dragging on the double arrow symbol that appears when you have the image selected.

 

After you have inserted the paper doll, repeat the steps with the clothes.

One of my favorite features of Cricut Design Space is that when you change the colors of elements in the layers pallet, the program will assume that you want to cut those items out of a different kind of material. To change the colors of something, go over to the far right side and find the element you want to change. For text boxes, they are usually represented by the first letter in the line of text. For images, if will show a small version of the image. Click on the colored black dot and a color menu will pop up and you can change it to another color.

Change the color of the clothing so Design Space knows that you want to cut it out of a different material than the doll. Resize the clothing so that it fits your doll well. You can layer them over top of each other to check the fit.

When your project looks the way you want it, it the Make It button in the top right corner of the screen.

You can see that the Cricut automatically separated the cuts into two different mats by color. This is perfect for us because we will cut the doll out of cardstock and the clothes out of washi tape. You can easily cut the second mat multiple times to get clothes out of a different washi tape patterns.

If everything looks the way you want it to, hit continue in the bottom right corner.

Switch the Smart Dial on the machine to the material you are cutting for the first cut, we will set the dial to cardstock for the doll. I also cut out several sets of clothes in the cardstock before moving on to the washi sheets.

For the Washi Sheets, switch the Smart Dial on your machine to Custom Material. Then in the drop down menu on the right hand side scroll down to find Washi Sheets.

Cut the Washi Sheets and then peel the excess Washi off of the sheet.

 

Add hair and faces to your paper doll and then feed them through a laminator. You can download the hair and other outfits I made for my dolls here.

After your dolls are laminated cut them out, leaving an extra bit of clear lamination around the doll for the clothes to stick to. Then you can peel the washi tape clothes off of the paper and stick them on the dolls. When you are done, stick the clothes back to the original backing so you can use them again later! Yup! You can stick them again and again!

What kinds of clothes would you make for your dolls?

 

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.