Laminated Paper Doll Made to Look Like a Lovey

How did you spend your morning? I spent mine sneaking around our downstairs feeling like a fugitive. I started out in the laundry room. When I heard my daughter coming down the stairs, I frantically came out and tried to distract her. After I finally convinced her to go upstairs, I ran to the couch for better lighting. But she was too fast. I scooped up what I was working on and made a mad dash to my husband’s office. I quickly got to work behind the locked door and hoped her protests wouldn’t wake up the baby. What was I up to? I needed a picture of her lovey named Lumpy to make a fun laminated paper doll. We have 3 copies of her lovey and I was taking pictures of the best looking one. I didn’t dare get caught with a duplicate Lumpy. 

Paper dolls have been around forever as a super simple way to keep kids entertained. I gave them an upgrade to make them more durable and made them even more fun by using a picture of my child’s lovey for the doll. The doll and clothes were super easy to make and my toddler was even able to help a little.

How to Make a Lovey Laminated Paper Doll

Materials:

• Laminator
• Cardstock
• Scissors
• Velcro
• Stickers (optional)

Setup:

Time for a photo shoot with your kid’s lovey. Hopefully yours goes better than mine did. Try to arrange the lovey to poke arms and legs out as much as possible. Once you print the picture, cut all the way around it. I used some creative licensing here and gave Lumpy legs.

Creating:

Now that you have acted as a photographer, it’s time to be a fashion designer. To make the clothes, I started by putting the Lumpy paper doll on top of a piece of colored cardstock. I traced around where a shirt would go leaving some room. Then I picked the doll up and completed all my lines. I errored on the side of too big.

Then I had Lumpy “try on” the shirt. I adjusted and cut it a little bit at a time. Between each cut, I put it back on the doll. Once the shirt was just how I wanted I stopped.

My daughter had been asking to help this whole time so I let her choose stickers to decorate the shirt with. You can skip this step or decorate in a different way. I think stripes or polka dots would add a fun look.

Then I made more shirts by tracing the one I had already made on different colors of paper. I also repeated the steps I took to make the shirt in order to make pants, shorts, a skirt, and a dress.

Once I finished making all the clothes, it was time to laminate. I followed my laminator’s instructions to laminate all of the pieces. I then cut out each piece, making sure to leave a little bit of lamination around the edge.

The last step was to stick on the Velcro. My Velcro has a sticky back, so all I had to do was cut it and stick it on. Make sure the doll has one side of the Velcro and all the clothing pieces have the other side.

My Lumpy laminated paper doll was now complete with her very own wardrobe. The whole process was a little more complicated than regular paper dolls, but the end product was much more fun and resilient. My daughter is obsessed with her lovey so of course this was a big hit. Lumpy’s likeness has been used before in crafts like these wipe lid family pictures. Lumpy also has crafts made for her all the time like this sleep sack and this backpack.

Hope you enjoy! What do you want your laminated paper doll to look like?