When my sisters and I were young, paper dolls were a popular toy for young girls. We discovered that creating our own paper dolls was as fun and entertaining as actually playing with them.

To make our homemade paper dolls, we found comic books with pictures of girls, full length; preferably dressed in swim suits or shorts outfits. Most of our "dolls" were taken from the "Millie the Model" and "Archie and Veronica" comic books.

When we found an appropriate "doll", we rough cut around the girl; pasted it to a thicker paper or thin cardboard (comparable to a manilla folder). After the glue dried (our glue was usually the white of an egg or flour and water paste), we cut out the "doll".

We would place the "doll" on a piece of paper and outline a dress or pants suit, to fit her. We filled in the dress details, colored it, then cut them out to use.

I can remember spending many happy rainy or snowy days creating whole wardrobes for our "dolls"!

Once we had our paper dolls ready to play with, we created houses for them. We used pages from magazines, catalogs or newspaper, folded four times length wise as the walls. We then cut out furniture that was pictured in catalogues to "furnish" our "house".

It didn't matter if the "chair" or "bed" was too small for our "doll", we laid her on it anyway and pretended she was sitting there.

We would spend days creating our "house" and weeks playing with them!

Very happy memories.

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