tuftears | Learning to Make Paper Dolls

This isn't actually as easy as you might think.

It all began with the Cherry Blossom Festival of 2013 when I became aware of the mysteries and wonders of Japanese paper dolls. Take a look at the link, tell me you wouldn't be interested in being able to make your own!

This year, I inquired whether they knew of any paper doll classes down here, but on being informed they were pretty much the only one around, I decided to try the workshop. So, roll forward a few weeks to May 19th, I gathered what little courage I possessed and essayed the 50-minutes or so drive to San Francisco. (Aiee!) This is quite a bit out of my comfort range; I'm not normally comfy driving any further than 20 minutes or so, but Japantown in San Francisco is not near the BART stations, unfortunately.

I got there quite early, allowing for me to try and find some lunch and maybe browse a bit. Some browsing did reveal ramen places (and sushi, but I'm not much for sushi, something about raw fish makes me reluctant to put it in my mouth) but I suspected it might be a bit heavy food. I got an egg muffin sammich from a local cafe instead. I also failed to find a paper dolls book in Books Nikaku. It really is an esoteric topic!

Here's the Japanese Community Center classroom:

I was there a fair bit early but the teacher, Rochelle Lum, was good about giving me the handouts and some materials to get started early. It was actually a pretty small workshop, maybe 6-7 people or so at the most. Ms. Lum spent a lot of her time working with each of us inexperienced tyro one-on-one to demonstrate the techniques needed.

Let's take a look at the process...

This is a sample doll so we can see what they're supposed to look like, on top of the handout.

Reverse side, so you can see the obi.

Here, we have the papers. These are the complete set of papers you need to make one of these dolls.

They look so small, but they're actually made of a large number of well-thought-out pieces, fit one into another. Elmer's glue is used to help bind the pieces together. The head is a bit of cotton, rolled up for volume and then cut into an oval shape, then some very fine and tissue-thin rice paper is wrapped around it and the ends twirled as you see here.

Ms. Lum had example sheets like this around the classroom, demonstrating how to make the hair pieces. The hairdo on the geisha looks simple but it's actually made up of three pieces, each of which is then crinkled on a stick to give the look of elegantly coiffed hair. So you have one piece that goes around, another on top as the bun, then a third piece being the part that hangs over the forehead.

This is the finished doll. A bit misshapen compared to Ms. Lum's example, but it was running late and I was anxious to get back home and get some rest and try to stave off the cold/sore throat/whatnot I feared might be coming! (illness has been running around the workplace)

It was a pretty exhausting day, but quite interesting to learn how it's done. I don't think I'm curious enough to go back for the follow-up workshops, though; it's much too far for my comfort.

But hey, I learned a few things!