When I was a little girl, my mother would give me a brand-new set of paper dolls once a year. While waiting impatiently for my annual set, I would cut paper dolls out of McCalls Magazine, The Children’s Friend–or sometimes even the newspaper. When my daughters came along, I was able to successfully instill a love of paper dolls in them even though paper dolls were sometimes hard to find. But by the time my granddaughters came along, paper dolls had essentially disappeared from American store shelves.
For the next decade, I tried to find a machine that would print and cut out paper dolls. A very good friend, who tested cutting machines, knew what I was looking for and let me know when a machine finally came on the market that would have the quality I wanted. Then I had to find an artist whose designs met my vision and knew what a paper doll was. Through trial and error, I discovered one artist from India, two from the US, three from Ukraine, one from Belarus, two from Pakistan, one from Indonesia, one from Argentina, and one from Norway. They draw the dolls and clothes. I color, print, cut and package them.
My granddaughters have used these magnetic paper dolls while traveling (in an airplane or on a road trip), hanging out in the kitchen with family (via the refrigerator door) and the youngest even took them with her when she was in the hospital for a week.
It’s been a long, almost 20-year process, but here we are, and I am very pleased to offer precisely cut, fully magnetic–both doll and clothes–water resistant, and spray disinfectable, vinyl paper dolls. All so that others can enjoy paper dolls just as much as I do!