Cutting dolls made of paper have long been loved by children from all over the world. Older people remember how fun and exciting it is to come up with the image of a beautiful girl, to draw her a friend and young children, creating a family for the game. And how interesting it is to come up with images for a pet, putting on her fashionable things! Such dolls were especially relevant among the children of the Soviet Union, when in stores they sold only big identical small dolls with a squeaker on the back, and I wanted to have a slender fashionista, with foreign outfits, like from foreign films - jeans, blouses, long evening dresses, which, unfortunately, could not afford our compatriots.
Nowadays, children, fortunately, do not know such problems. In the store you can buy any doll, cartoon character or fairy tale, of different ages and sizes. However, cutting dolls are slowly starting to return to our lives. What is the secret of such popularity? Why do children who have access to any of the best toys still love paper characters with paper clothes? Consider the story of the birth of dolls for carving: how do they attract even teenagers, why have so many years been successful with several generations of children?
Toy story
The first time the world learned about this kind of dolls in a London advertisement in 1791. The figurine of a young girl from thick cardboard 20 cm high was produced and was called an English doll. Such dolls were used by dressmakers of that time as models. The seamstress painted the dress that customers ordered her and put on a cardboard doll for carving. The client evaluated the design of the outfit and made an order. New fashionable outfits for advertising in clothing stores were also exhibited in painted form on small paper dolls.
Only at the beginning of the 19th century the first characters for the game appeared, which were sold with clothes. The first such doll called Little Funny (little Fanny), created in 1810 in the same London, is known.
Print the doll with clothes for cutting in the Soviet Union decided only in 1978 in Perm. The released set was called “Mashenka's Dress” and consisted of a printed image of a doll and separate sheets with several types of clothes and shoes.
Children and parents really liked the idea, and the toy gained great popularity. They made sets for the game, mainly on their own, since it was impossible to get prints in such a huge country.
New life games
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when free access to imported goods and toys opened up, the children forgot sets of paper dolls for carving. Their place was taken by fashionable Barbie with beautiful outfits. Then the time came for various beauties from cartoons, fairy-tale characters. The shelves of shops bend under the weight of children's toys and games, costumes and expensive furniture, toy houses with all the necessary internal equipment, including curtains, rugs and even toilet bowls.
It would seem, why among such a variety of paper dolls, which also need to be cut independently with scissors. But the fashion for such games is once again returning to our lives. What is so attractive about a paper carving doll with a set of clothes?
Goodies toys
- Children love to work with scissors, cut shapes along the contours. And in this game you need to cut out not only a doll, but also many small items of clothing with thin stripes for attaching to the character’s shoulders.
- You can draw any character yourself. If the child’s artistic abilities are not observed, then the desired figure can be found on the Internet and simply print it on a printer. It can be a young girl like Barbie or a popular Winx doll, kitty cat or even a duck Ponochka from the cartoon about Uncle Scrooge.
3. You can imagine yourself as a fashion designer of clothes and come up with outfits for any occasion, creating both casual jeans and T-shirts, and evening dresses with beautiful decorations.
4. You can decorate clothes with rhinestones and half beads, sequins and faux fur.
Why is this game useful?
You can start playing with paper dolls from 3 to 4 years old. First, you can print the finished kit or purchase it in a toy store. When cutting, the child learns to work with scissors, develops motor skills, the strength of fingers and hands, which are so necessary for further education at school.
The kid in the game remembers the order of putting on clothes, their names, easier to learn colors and shades.
Older children can already independently draw and color things for the character. At the same time, imagination and creative abilities develop.
Teenage girls also like to play such an exciting game, because they still don’t know how to sew, and it’s easy to come up with new images with such a doll. Thus, children not only learn aesthetics in clothes, but also acquire the skills of combining different things and shoes.
How to make a doll
If you decide to make a doll for the game yourself, then first you need to draw it. You can try to copy from a suitable picture or just print the finished one from the Internet on a printer. Before cutting, it must be glued to a solid base. You can use thick cardboard, corrugated thick paper for packaging. Best of all, the figure will be held on PVA glue. In order for the doll to serve for a long time, after painting it, you need to glue it with transparent tape on both sides.
Then you can start drawing clothes and shoes. In the samples in the article, you see that all items have special small strips of paper. They are not painted because they are bent behind the doll’s back. It is on them that the outfits on the doll are held.
Conclusion
Cutting out dolls from paper is a fascinating activity, useful for the development of a child. Such a creative game can instill not only a taste for the correct selection of things and aesthetics in clothes, but also artistic abilities. Who knows, maybe after such a game your child will grow into a talented clothing designer and become famous throughout the world.