Total Time 1 hour
by Amanda Formaro
Create your own kinara for Kwanzaa out of doll pins and spools. Fun to paint and display!
What you'll need
- 7 wooden doll pins
- 8 wooden spools
- Acrylic craft paint: red, green, black, orange, yellow and gold
- White craft glue
- 3 chenille stems
- Scissors
helpful tip
1. Wooden spools and doll pins can be found at your local craft supply store. 2. Red represents the struggles of the African people, black is for the people, and green is representative of the future. 3. Teach the meaning of the kinara while making this project.
How to make it
- Paint 3 doll pins with red paint, leaving the "heads" of the pins unpainted. Paint 3 more with green paint and the last one black.
- Paint all 7 spools with gold paint.
- When doll pins are dry, paint the head of each doll pin with orange and let dry.
- Paint the very top of each doll pin head with yellow paint.
- Insert a chenille stem into the "legs" of one of the doll pins until it stops. Trim the exposed end of the chenille so that about ½" is showing. Repeat for all doll pins.
- Glue two of the spools on top of one another; this is for the center candle.
- Put a generous drop of glue on top of each spool.
- Take a doll pin and turn it upside down, place some glue on the bottom of the doll pin.
- Insert the exposed chenille at the bottom of the doll pin into the spool, the glue will go down inside the spool with the chenille stem. Repeat for each doll pin. Make sure to attach the black doll pin into the doubled up spool.
- Allow all to dry before displaying.
- Line up the doll pins by color, with the tallest one (black) in the middle.
