Free Printable Betsy McCall Paper Dolls

McCall's Magazine's Set of Paper Dolls

Karen Barnes
Over a 40 year span, McCall's ran Betsy McCall paper dolls in their magazine. Betsy started her journey through life with her mom, dad, friends, siblings, cousins and her pets in May 1951.

Even though Betsy has not aged much in the years, she can give Barbie a run for her money with her own adventures and travels across the United States. With each group of paper dolls, you will find a storyline for Betsy and her adventures.


Collecting and printing the Betsy McCall paper dolls.


Since these are not in the original magazines in which they were issued, collecting this set of paper dolls online will not have a larger monetary value as they would in the magazines in which they were issued.

For those who want to have a set just the same, this would be a great way to do so. However, if you are wanting to have a set for yourself and a set for a child in the home to play with, I would suggest printing out a copy for each person. If the child is wanting to have a set to play with and a set to keep, two copies would be best for them.

If you are not wanting to print out three copies of the paper dolls, save all the paper dolls to your computer. Once you have them saved, you can burn them to a CD.

You can also use the copies on the CDs to take to a printing shop. This may be just as cheap to do rather than doing it yourself. Since there are almost 400 sets of Betsy McCall paper dolls at the time of this article, most printing shops like Kinko's sometimes gives a discount on large amounts of items printed.

Tips for burning the paper dolls to a CD.

Since most CDs being used for storage has a certain amount of space, I would suggest burning each year to a single CD. This will allow you to have each year together. Once you have each decade burned, you could store them in single sleeves with the year and the name of the dolls.

You could try to burn each decade to a CD so you will not use as many CDs. One thing you should know about each sheet for the paper dolls is they are just over one megabyte.

When choosing the CDs to save them on, you can take the number of paper doll pages per year (12) by the number of megabytes (average is about 1.3) to see how many you can get to a compact disc. This will also tell you how many discs you will need for all the paper dolls.

Betsy McCall Paper Dolls

The link above will take you to the home page of the Betsy McCall paper dolls. Along the left side menu, you will find six links for the years Betsy can be found in the McCall's magazine.

Starting with the 1950s link, you will find a link for the years from 1951 through 1959. With each year of the 50s, you will find a link for every month Betsy was in a McCall's issue.

The 60s and 70s links for the paper dolls have each year with the month Betsy was out and about with friends and family. When the 80s, 90s and the turn of the century, Betsy's paper dolls are were not added to every year and month of an issue of McCall's magazine.

Betsy does make an appearance in the early part of the 2000s. Those appearances can be found in the extras link on the website for these paper dolls.

Although Betsy appears over a 40 year span in McCalls, each decade will not have a complete set of paper dolls.

Since you know what to expect to see with each year of these paper dolls, there is a PDF version link at the bottom of each set of paper dolls and accessories. The PDF will download to your computer. You can print the paper dolls from the location saved on your computer.

Each set of paper dolls come in a full color layout as shown in each link. Some sections will have more accessories than others along with a storyline for each activity.


More by this Contributor:

Free Printable 1920's Paper Doll and Paper Doll Clothes

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Published by Karen Barnes

Karen is an online marketer, freelance writer, online game player, crafter, mother, wife, and home cook. She has worked in fast food, grocery stores, and a home and farm store. She studied business in hig...  View profile

1 Comments

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  • Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben7/15/2011

    I love Betsy McCall!

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