What is a movable paper doll?

A flat paper doll is a picture. A movable one bends at the elbow, the hip and the knee, because every joint is a real hole with a real fastener through it. That single difference is the whole shop.

Joints, not outfits

Traditional paper dolls are static: the doll stays still and you lay paper outfits on top, held by folded tabs. A movable doll works the other way. The body arrives in separate pieces, and small fasteners called brads connect them, so arms, legs and often the head turn. The doll can point, sit, wave, or slouch.

Where the holes go

Every hole is drawn where a joint needs one, not where it happened to look convenient on the sheet. That is why the arm folds at the elbow instead of somewhere along the forearm, and why a dress still has room for a curtsy. Getting a hole wrong by three millimetres is the difference between a doll that poses and a doll that flops.

The paper is yours to choose

You print these at home, so the paper is your decision. Between 160 and 200 gsm is the range that holds a joint: thinner tears at the hole, thicker refuses to turn. Matt paper shows the drawing better than glossy. Card from a cereal box works too, and plenty of people use it.

One scale, so they share a shelf

Every doll in the shop is drawn to the same 17 cm. A queen can stand next to a tomato and neither looks wrong. That was a deliberate constraint from the first sheet, and it is why the collections work as sets rather than as separate curiosities.

The Meggie Retrow team
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