Kawaii Kokeshi Doll Crafts

It’s Hinamatsuri today, a Japanese festival that includes displays of beautiful detailed dolls. The traditional dolls are expensive to buy and complicated to make so I’m mostly looking at their simpler and cuter cousins with kokeshi doll crafts for you to try.

OrigamiAko does have a kawaii take on Hina dolls if you want to stay traditional. There are quite a few steps to these but nothing too difficult.

Or head over to Kamikey who has an origami tutorial for Cat Hina Dolls!

Whenever I think of kawaii kokeshi, it’s Momiji that come to mind and they have some cute free printables including this dress up paper doll that you can colour in too.

Little Dear Prints has digital clip art available that you can print and turn into a kokeshi dolls garland. The individual dolls could also be used for cards, finger puppets, journaling and more.

Real kokeshi dolls are hand-painted wood and Handmade Charlotte runs with that for these sweet stir sticks where the dolls are made from wooden beads. You can also skip the sticks and use the painted dolls for lots of other crafty projects.

This cross stitch pattern from GERA! by Kyoko Maruoka is so clever and creates a 3D doll for a very cute charm or ornament. There’s 5 different kokeshi doll designs included and you can change up the colours for even more.

Ribbon spool dolls are a classic and useful too. 2 Cats & 1 Doll has an older DIY using polymer clay that looks so kawaii and would make a great gift for a creative friend.