Anyone know how to make a pinata?

[ilikethedesert]

My dd said she wanted one for her 4th birthday a few months back. Her birthday is is in two weeks. When I mentioned it to her tonight, she said, "what's a pinata?" She liked the idea again when I told her what it was. I want to make one myself if I can figure out how!

Thanks in advance!

[Clarinet]

Balloons. Blow them up and arrange them in a pattern. You can tape them together. Don't worry about the cracks in between the balloons because you can just stretch the papier mache across them to make straight lines. Use one part flour with one part water, saturate newspaper strips and lay them on the balloons. You have to kind of run the paper between your fingers to squeeze the excess glue out of the paper strips or it gets really nasty, really fast. Remember to save a hole in the top to put the candy/treats into. When you are done, you can use a pin to poke holes where the balloons were. They'll deflate into the pinatta.

[Starr]

We made them in Spanish class once. You take a brown paper bag and stuff it with goodies. Then staple it shut. Buy different colored tissue paper and cut them into 2"X2" squares, you can cut a stack in one shot. Seperate colors. Have small dish with elmers glue. For lots of kids may need sevral dishes. Find a design, if you want and frehand draw it on the paper bag. Then give each child a pencil. Show them to take the pencil eraser end and put it in the center of the tissue paper. Then dip the small pencil end in glue and apply it to the bag. Work in a continuous pattern very close together and not sparadically, for better results. It can take a while. You can either do one side of the paper bag or the entire thing. Then hang by using a string and going through the top stapled end of the bag.

[ilikethedesert]

Thank you both for the replies and good ideas! Now to figure out a design.

[roomformore]

The balloon makes a cool fish! Use crepe paper streams for the tail... or you could make it into a hot air balloon.

[ilikethedesert]

I did it! I blew up a balloon , taped on newspaper cones for sun rays and covered the whole thing with paper mache. My three year old, (now 4) loved helping. Then we painted the whole thing yellow and both girls helped decorate it. I added streamers from each of the cones and my husband rigged up some sort of wood and wire way to hang it up. We hung it from a tree and hit it woth a kiddie broom. It was a HUGE hit! The biiger kids- the five year olds- helped the little 3 and 4 year olds. I had filled it with wool balls, bean bags and other non- edible goodies. When it broke open I had all the kids collect the goodies and put them in a basket so it could be evenly sorted into their goodie bags to take home. It was great!

THanks for your help! I love this community!

[GoddessKristie]

I love pinatas! Ole!
I'm glad they liked it!

[Rach]

http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/tinypinata.html
I made these tiny ones, for my daughter's first birthday party (duck themed). They were a hit becasue the kids got to tear into them, and everything inside was theirs. :P

Have fun!

[Canadianmommax3]

here's a somewhat funny story, my sis made an Elmo pinata for her dd who turned 2, she invited my two sons who were around 9 and 7. So the kids are wacking elmo and elmo wasn't breaking. So than my sister said ok boys go at so they are whacking the hell out of Elmo, pieces of Elmo are flying everywhere and my niece is screaming in terror because Elmo is getting the crap beat out of him. She was quite traumatized for awhile but kids are resilient!! (ok that was a quote from John Candy in Home Alone) anyways she was quite upset, we laugh now about it but at the time we felt so bad for her.

guess you had to be there

[ilikethedesert]

THAT is why we went the inanimate object route VS the cute fuzzy animal pinata!!! LOL! Love the mini pinata idea! Maybe I'll try it for my one year olds second b'day.
That how to make stuff site listed above is way cool