Just Hit It

The Piñata that is! There is just something so festive about having a piñata at a birthday party-it looks fun! And the kids just love letting out some pent up aggression by beating the heck out of it 🙂

Making a piñata is actually very easy, if not particularly neat. You need:

Newspaper
Flour and water paste
Balloon
Paint/streamers

Blow your balloon up to the size you want for your piñata.

Cut newspaper into strips, approx 1” by 1 ½ or 2 feet.

Mix up flour and water paste in a large bowl. It should be thick and goopy, about like cake batter.

Cover your work surface with extra newspaper or a plastic tablecloth.

Set the balloon in a bowl to keep it steady (believe me, you don’t want a slippery slimy balloon rolling all over your table.

Dip each strip of newspaper into the paste. The strip needs to be completely covered with glue. Then I like to sort of squeegee it off with my fingers so the paper is wet and slimy but not dripping.

Smooth the paper onto the balloon. Repeat, changing directions and crisscrossing. Make sure you leave a small opening somewhere to pop the balloon through and pull the pieces out later.

When the balloon is completely covered with about 2 layers of paper, place it in an out of the way area to dry. Don’t make the layers too thick or noone will be able to break the piñata! You can either leave it to dry either balanced on the bowl, or hang it up by the knot of the balloon from the ceiling. If you use the bowl method you will probably have to flip it over part way through so the bottom can dry as well. (I put mine to dry at about 3pm, and it was dry by the next morning)

Pop the balloon and pull out the pieces.

Take a knife or some scissors and cut a flap out of the piñata to put the candy inside. You also need to make a small hole at the top and rig a string to hang the piñata from. I tied one end of my string (which was 3 strands of yarn braided) to a Popsicle stick, then put the stick inside the piñata and threaded the string out through the hole in the top. I then took 2 small pieces of duct tape and taped the Popsicle stick in place inside so it wouldn’t slip around.

Fill with your goodies. Once filled, tape the flap shut.

Now comes the fun part-decorating! Usually I would paint the entire surface a solid color, but of course I was out of paint (and I didn’t want to run into town or wait). I decided to make layers of fringed crepe streamers on mine. First I cut short strips of pink streamers and completely covered the bottom by crisscrossing them, then I started winding the fringed streamer over the piñata horizontally, overlapping as I went. Lastly I made a “dangle” of a picture of the powerpuff girls and hung it from the bottom.

It may not look totally professional, but it is cute, and Princess is thrilled with it. I quote “Mama, that is the most beauty piñata EVER”. You can easily adapt it to any theme by the way colors you paint it, and you can further customize it by decopaging images onto it or hanging “dangles”. Just try not to do anything that will make it even harder to break it open, especially if it is for young kids.

You can fill a piñata with whatever you want. I spent $7 at the dollar store and bought:

1 pkg of Smarties
1 pkg of strawberry candies
2 8pks of “candy watches and bracelets”
2 5pks of childrens toothbrushes with covers
1 8pk of plastic whistles

These items will be the kids “favors”.

Making the pinata itself didn’t cost me anything. Even the balloon was left over from something else. The streamers were part of what I planned to use for decorating anyway-so I count that cost under the cost of decorating, not of the pinata.