DIY Homemade Pinata

My very first DIY tutorial. This I made in a weeks time period. I was told that I needed a longer time frame, but you know me, I like to procrastinate. Benson requested a Lego Ninjago theme for his birthday this year. Since I didn't have much to work with as far as supplies, I was left to home make everything for his party. I knew I wanted a pinata for the kids. I did a little bit of research and went into it blinded but I'm so happy with the result. For all the hard work I put into it, it was a little painful watching it get destroyed by the little kiddies.

Pinatas are fairly inexpensive and easy to make. To go with our Ninjago theme, we wanted a round shaped pinata. With the being said, to make your own pinata, you'll need:

Balloons (we used an exercise ball for the size and shape. You can also use 

cardboard boxes)

2 large mixing bowls (one will be for stabilizing your ball and the other for mixing your paper mache concoction) 

 

Flour

Water

Salt

 

Lots of newspaper strips (After starting, I realized it was more efficient to work with larger strips of paper)

 

 

Party Streamers

Glue

 

Construction paper

Pinata filling (candy, toys, etc)

1. To get started, I ripped my newspaper strips. I found it to be more efficient to have bigger strips of paper. (I'm all about saving time) I would say about 3-4in strips. I used about 2 stacks of newspapers for our large sized exercise ball. I did a total of 4 layers of newspaper.

2. Mix an equal amount of flour and water with a couple tablespoons of salt. I didn't measure my salt, I just added a generous amount of salt into the mixture. I started by doing 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of water. It mixed fairly easily.

3. Take your newspaper strips one at a time and soak up the paper mache mixture and have at it.  

 4. Once you've covered your pinata, you'll allow it to dry overnight. You'll want to repeat for at least a couple layer. In a weeks time, I was able to do 4 layers allowing a day to decorate it.

5. Once you've gotten enough layers added and it has completely dried, it's time to begin decorating! We lucked out with a simple pinata. All we needed were streamers and construction paper. I wrapped black streamer across the whole ball and took scissors to snip frills.

 

6. Once I got half way, I flipped it over to deflate the ball. (If you were using balloons, you'd pop them and pull all the latex out) Once deflated, I was able to maneuver it around to pull out and continued with the decorating.

 

7. I didn't care to cover the hole since it would be at the top. I filled it with different candies, toys, play-doh, etc. It was pretty heavy after filling it with the goodies. So we had to figure out a way to tie the strings on it to hold long enough for the kids to hit. I eventually poked holes and threaded the yarn in a square to support the weight. 

8. I finished with the streamers. I added the Ninjago eyes made from construction paper and Voila! Ninjago pinata!