Last year we had “make and break a piñata” on our bucket list. It didn’t go quite as planned. We did make and break a piñata so we did accomplish that adventure on our bucket list. However, I thought I’d make this beautiful piñata with scallops like one I saw somewhere on the web. It was a disaster. An ugly disaster. When I started thinking about activities for Corbin’s Superhero Party and a piñata came to mind I almost dismissed it. Not one to back down from a chance to redo a mistake, I started brainstorming. I started to browse old comic book images online for inspiration. I thought about maybe doing a POW! or other word, a lightning bolt or a barbell. These options all seemed daunting to a piñata novice like myself. I finally found an idea when I saw a box marked TNT in one of the comics. EASY. I could make a piñata shaped like a bomb. [Side note: I thought very carefully about how to word that sentence. I had visions of SWAT showing up at my front door] Here’s a quick rundown of how we did it:
Materials:
- strips of newspaper
- 4 bottles of Elmer’s glue
- a big punch balloon
- a bowl to set the balloon on
- black acrylic paint
- platinum metallic paint
- duct tape
- twine
Blow up your balloon. Use tape to hold down the knot at one end of the balloon and the loop that the string attaches to on the other end. Mix up some sticky goodness with a 3:1 ratio of glue to water. We mixed in a 9 x 14 dish. I think next time we might use a cookie sheet to make the mixture even shallower. Dip the strips in the glue mixture and then pinch the strip between your pointer and middle fingers and squeegee off the excess glue. Place the strips on the balloon. We did three layers of this, making sure to vary the direction in which we laid them. We lined our bowl with dry paper strips before leaving it all to dry. This way when it’s dry, it’s stuck to more newspaper and not to the bowl. We learned this the hard way as last year.
We let our piñata dry for about 36 hours. I painted it with black acrylic paint and then used metallic paint for the TNT. I cut a hole with an x-acto knife that was large enough to fill with candy. I put strips of duct tape around the outside of the hole. I was hoping to prevent the twine from ripping through the piñata once it was hung. It worked! I just poked some holes and strung the twine through. We have plant hooks hanging from our deck so we just attached it to one of those. If I had to do it all over again I’d put more than the three layers of newspaper on it. It came down a bit faster than I expected and we had a couple sad kiddos who didn’t get a chance to try to break it open. Luckily, thanks to all that duct tape, the top of the piñata remained and the kids were happy to take turns trying to beat down the rest of it.
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