My ‘lil boss requested to have a birthday party and with it comes a request for a pinata. We have not held parties for the longest that I can remember and so decided to have a small do for him with families and close friends.
Went round checking out ready-made pinatas and found that it’s not worth the price to pay. Thus I decided to DIY my own pinata. The catch is my ‘lil boss wants a dinosaur pinata!
Blew up a balloon to the required size. This will be the main “body”. The gloss you see on the balloon is because I spread a thin layer of vaseline on it. This will enable the balloon to separate easily from the paper mache.
For the glue, opted for cheaper version. Bought tapioca flour. Mix required amount with some tap water and added boiling hot water to the paste. Important to continue mixing it and voila! you get your own DIY glue as well. Yea yea I’m a cheapo but just think of the amount of glue I’ll be using if store bought!
Started the paper mache by layering it on the balloon. I think I layered about 5-6 times all over the balloon and left it to dry. Tried layering 2 layers, left to dry but the balloon pop in the midst of drying and the shape went out. Thus layered everything at one go and left to dry a few days. You need to ensure it’s thoroughly dried so that the shape stays.
After the “body” dried completely, it’s time to construct the other body parts. This is the tough for me… Papers, masking tape, toilet rolls all came into play.
Then again paper mache to cover all those masking tapes and also to ensure that the body parts stays in place. A few layers of paper mache for this and left to dry.
Once the whole pinata is completely dry, it’s time to pop the balloon. I cut an opening and ensured that it’s big enough for my hand to go in as we need to thread in a wire so that you can hang the pinata. Took out the deflated balloon as well.
Important to ensure that your wire is sturdy enough to withstand the weight of your goodies that you will be inserting into the body of the pinata.
Inside view of the pinata body. It’s smooth all over due to the think layer of vaseline but worry not, it’s not oily at all. I re-enforced the hole where I poked the wire through with masking tape.
After inserting all your goodies, tape shut the slits. Now comes to the tedious and fun part – decorating your pinata. Cut stripes of crepe papers and starting glueing it to the pinata. It is really tedious as you want to ensure that all parts of newspaper are covered and crepe papers are really fragile when wet. So do not spread too much glue on it while you are doing this. I used my DIY glue for this as well.
Taa-daa my completed DIY pinata. Yea yea my niece said it look more like a turtle than a dinosaur :p
Well this is a tame dinosaur and the most important is my ‘lil boss likes it. For me, it’s a feeling of great accomplishment having to DIY this pinata for him. Now I just hope he is able to knock it open for the goodies to fall out!