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Make Mine a Mola

Make Mine a Mola

Create layers and layers of beautiful colors in cool shapes! Make your art in a style like popular molas made by the Cuna Indians of Panama.

Ages: 8 and up, Tween and up

CIY Staff

Create It Yourself

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Colored Pencils
  • Construction Paper
  • Glue

Steps

  • Step 1

    Look at examples of colorful, detailed textile art created by the Cuna people. Many of their creations feature animals such as fish, lizards, or snakes. Outline an animal or any other shape for your project on bright paper with a Crayola Twistables® Colored Pencil. Fill your creature with lots of rounded interior shapes such as ovals and circles.

  • Step 2

    Use Crayola Scissors to cut out the interior shapes first. Then cut out around the outside.

  • Step 3

    Attach your animal to a contrasting color of paper with a Crayola Glue Stick. Leaving a thin border around the outside, cut around the original animal shape. Repeat making more borders on other paper colors several times, so your creature has several layers. Cut out a few interior shapes each time so new colors show through.

  • Step 4

    Glue your animal on a full sheet of paper. Molas traditionally have simple shapes and snaky lines to fill the background around the shape, too. Create an interesting frame around the edge of your paper with geometric shapes and snakes cut from several col

  • Step 5

    To finish your mola, draw lines to look like hand-sewn stitches.

Crafts

CIY Staff Tips

Use your imagination and have fun making your craft as creative as you are—there’s no wrong way to do it!

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