Rose as a paper doll

For a long time, my sister Mary’s been telling me I would enjoy owning a Xyron machine, and I finally got myself a 9″ wide one a couple of months ago — and I have been having great fun with it, using it to make stickers for the kids in church Nursery, laminated bookmarks for their mothers for Mother’s Day, and other projects. You can get different cartridges to do two-sided cold lamination, to apply permanent or repositionable adhesive, and to make sheet magnets. Following Mary’s lead, I’ve already tried a couple different magnetic paper dolls. Here’s today’s project:

I found the free printable Shirley Temple paper doll at this website, and we actually already made a small version earlier today that we put in a little tin my Gingher scissors came in, and Rose played with it during church today. Mabel has some animal magnets we made, too, and we made another little baby paper doll a couple weeks ago, so we can mix and match and put the baby clothes on the kitten, etc. It’s lots of fun. I really recommend getting a Xyron machine if you enjoy paper crafts, (and if, like me, you’re too lazy or too late to get to a place where you can do laminating by the time you’re working on a project.) The Xyron is really, really easy to use, too.

Dean would have known how to lighten Rose’s face to match the original paper doll’s skin better — or I guess I could have figured it out on my own — but I’m satisfied, and I bet Rose will love it. The one I printed is on an 8.5×11 page.

Now I just need more cute tins to put my magnetic paper dolls in — if anyone knows where to buy them (or has kept some around and is willing to part with them,) let me know.

Update: Okay, now I have finished the paper doll, and I have some hints if you decide to try making one.

You shouldn’t laminate the doll onto the sheet magnet, or the clothes won’t stick to her. You have a couple choices for this: The first would be to glue the doll right into the tin — well, actually yet another choice would be to leave the doll loose but place her between the tin and the clothing. The choice Mary suggested, (which I would not have thought of because I am not a genius at these things like she is,) is to
take a piece of the sheet magnet, turn it over, glue the doll to it (back side of doll to back side of sheet magnet — you can use the adhesive cartridge for this) and then, optionally, use the two-sided laminate cartridge and laminate her. Now the clothing will stick to the doll very well (sometimes it will want to be offset from where you want it by a very small amount, but unless you’re an extreme perfectionist then it’s not noticeable.) BUT, do make sure all the clothes and the doll are all parallel on your page before you laminate it to the magnetic sheet — mine that were at right angles won’t stick together. If your doll is magnetized, you won’t need a tin to play with it on — you can store it in an envelope or cardboard box.

Also, this will definitely be a labor of love to cut out. I used an old pair of 4″ embroidery scissors and the scissors did get sticky and probably less sharp.

While I was gathering ideas, I saw an already-cut-out magnetic Disney Cinderella doll on eBay that I’m sure would have made Rose just as happy (and I might still get it for her and stash it for her Christmas stocking,) but this was more fun for me to make. Once, anyway — I’m ready to take break from cutting out tiny shapes in sheet magnet for a while, now.

Explore posts in the same categories: Creative miscellany, My kids actually are funny (and sweet and wonderful)

Tags: crafts, how-to, paper dolls, xyron

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