DIY paper doll faces and speech bubbles ⇆ bloomize

“Smile”, “Hello”, “Thinking of you”, “Be happy” and “Uh-oh” were the expressions that came to me as I made these cuter-than-I-expected faces and assigned a speech bubble to all of them, except one.

Give anything a speech bubble and anything speaks.

All their faces were folded using 6″/15 cm single-sided origami square papers.

DOLL #1

Let me start with my “Smile” doll and her bob hairstyle. She is very easy to fold up.

HOW-TO STEPS

Fold paper in half both sides by pinching only the ends, don’t crease in full force. Unfold. Pinching lessens the visibility of a crease line across the face.
Fold in 2 triangles to meet in the middle.
Fold in a little section on the left and right sides. Crease.
Unfold step 3.
Tuck B under the dotted line.
Repeat on opposite side. Fold a section of the peak behind. The bigger the fold, the smaller the hair section.
Fold up triangles on bottom ends.
Then fold up the section with the triangles to the back.
Unfold the triangles.
Flatten.
Repeat on opposite side.
Fold down the flap.
Turn over, curl the fringe and give the ends a twist.

Doll #2

The next gal with a slightly shorter bob is just as quick to make.

HOW-TO STEPS

Follow the steps 1 to 6 from above. Fold the peak behind to the middle point. This makes the hair area smaller.
Fold up the bottom section to meet the peak.
Fold down a triangle on each end.
Then fold up a triangle on each each.
Fold down the top flap.
Turn over, curl the hair fringe.

Doll #3

This next doll looks a little more mature and I love it!

HOW-TO STEPS

Fold down a triangle with the bottom right corner as a point of reference.
Fold down a triangle on the opposite side, as shown.
Fold down the peak behind.
Turn over.
Fold in a section of both vertical sides.
Fold up a section of the bottom section.
Fold down and up 2 triangles on each end.
Fold down the top section to the base.
Turn over, it’s ready to dress with earrings or hair accessories. To add texture use mini pom poms, felt or fabric.

Doll #4 and #5

To make these 2, check out the tutorials here and here. The black-hair boy was made using black and grey papers adhered with a tape runner to make a double-sided sheet.

Here are some random wip pictures while dressing up the dolls.

Random work in progress snapshots.

A flower sticker and a ribbon bow cut-out were used as “hair clips” while dot stickers and round embossed hearts (made with an embossing folder) were cut out to adorn as earrings. The speech bubbles were drawn on cardstock, cut out, then written on with markers. Strips of clear transparency were cut and trimmed down to about 2.5″ x .25″ then each bubble was glued onto it on one end, leaving the other end to adhere behind the head.

Before I’d given these dolls away to the kids in my life, they were each adhered onto a chopstick (popsicle stick will be great too). I did stick some label stickers on the flaps behind (see above steps 11 and 5 respectively) for some added strength before sticking down a chopstick with white glue.