Unity Cup
By: Amanda Formaro
Difficulty: Easy
Age: 7 and up
Average User Rating:
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The Kikombe Cha Umoja, or Unity Cup, is used on the sixth day of Kwanzaa to perform the libation ritual during the Karamu feast. Make your own decorative unity cup to celebrate this holiday.
Learn more about this celebration on our main Kwanzaa page. Be sure to explore our Kwanzaa coloring pages, crafts, clip art and printables.
What you'll need:
- Wooden doll pin (clothespin with round head)
- Wooden doll pin stand
- White craft glue or hot glue gun
- Acrylic paint: black, green, red, yellow
- Paint brush
- Pattern
How to make it:
- Use the pattern to draw unity people onto the bottom half of the cup, just hard enough to indent. Paint the cup completely black, inside and out. Let dry. You will be able to see the indents through the paint.
- Paint the doll pin and stand black and let dry.
- When dry, glue the doll pin into the doll pin stand.
- Have a grown up poke a small hole in the bottom of the Styrofoam cup with a pen or pencil.
- Paint the unity people, alternating, one red, one green, etc. Use the handle end of a large paint brush to make the heads by dipping into paint and swirling in a circle.
- Use the handle end of a small paint brush to add yellow dots around the top of the cup and the doll stand.
- Use a paint brush to add a red and green swirling line around the cup between the unity people and the top of the cup.
- Let entire cup dry completely.
- When dry, insert the doll pin head into the bottom of the cup and add some glue. Let dry.
Tips:
- The colors of Kwanzaa are represented in this project: red for sufferage of ancestors, green for hope and the future, and black for the people. Yellow represents corn, a large part of the harvest celebration. You can skip painting the cup black in the interest of time if need be. Simply leave it white and make the dots black instead of yellow, paint the doll stand and pin white.
- Doll pins and stands are readily available at your local craft supply store.
- If you don’t have Styrofoam cups they can be found at any grocery store or dollar store. You can also use a yogurt container for this project.
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