Molas are the traditional textile art form of the indigenous Guna people. We have transferred their intricate appliqué technique onto paper in a child-friendly way. These mola templates are ‘paper molitas’. They’re printed on colored paper, cut out and glued together to create pictures.
Molas are particularly suitable for group work. If
several children work on the same motif, they can
swap different-colored body parts to create impressive Mola collages.
This resource contains printable templates for 10 different animal design and 4 ornament sheets, as well as detailed instructions. It includes the following animal motifs: Tapir, lizard, owl, rooster, eagle, duck, tucan, turtle, squirrel and fish.
The Guna live on coral islands off the coast of Panama. Before the arrival of the European colonizers, they painted their upper bodies with protective symbols to ward off disease, evil spirits, and demons. They got the colors for their paints from various fruits, plants, and minerals.
When the European missionaries forced them to cover their naked upper bodies, they sewed these symbols onto their clothing instead. This time-consuming technique involves sewing colored fabrics of different shapes and sizes on top of one another. The more layers of fabric that are used, the more valuable the mola. Particularly finely crafted molas can take hundreds of hours to make!
To get started, all you need is to download and print our Mola Animal Collages templates.
Choose a motif and print out the corresponding sheets. Each of these sheets should be printed in 3-5 colors. If you like, you can color in the templates in the colors of your choice beforehand, which then makes it easier to glue the mola pictures together.
Choose a sheet of colored paper for your background and then glue on a frame from the 4 thick strips on the ornamentation sheet: Using a glue stick, coat the printed sides with glue and then stick the strips to the outer edges of your background sheet.
Cut out part 1 (body) from a different color, coat the patterned side with glue and stick it to the center of your background. Cut out part 2 (body) from another color and stick it on the middle of part 1 so that the resulting border is same size all
around.
Then glue on the remaining parts layer by layer. If there are cutting lines on a body part, cut it up accordingly and stick on the individual pieces leaving a small gap between them as shown on the template.
Finally, decorate the blank areas around the main motif. On the ornament sheets you’ll find a variety of motifs. Striped patterns are especially typical for mola pictures. For these, cut out strips in the desired color, cut them down to the desired length with scissors and then glue them on. Flowers and leaf motifs can be layered on top of each other.
Molas are particularly suitable for group work. If several children work on the same motif, they can swap different-colored body parts. That’s why the small parts of the motif are shown in frames, so that they don’t get lost after they’ve been cut out. For example: Out of 2 ‘Tapir’ sheets in 5 different colors, you get 5 different colored tapir.
