Don't be scared of making a Pinata! ... Loads of Pinata Tips and Tricks

Piñatas can be bought  inexpensively but you can easily make a really special one. The ones you buy are generally of the “cardboard-shell-covered-with-tissue-paper” type. The homemade ones are often painted/coloured tissue papered  paper mache.

Homemade Paper Mache Piñata

They do not take as much time to make as you may suspect -  they don’t require as much hands on time as drying time. You can apply all the wet paper mache pretty quickly and then just put it away for a few days (it can take days for things to dry!)  It's nice if you have a quiet area of your home to leave the piñata in peace.

Piñata Materials

Paste

You can mix the “paste” from anything: white flour and water (medium consistency – perhaps 2-1 ratio flour to water); wallpaper paste; or watered down white glue. If you decide to use the flour and water method - fill a bowl with flour  and add the water to it.

If you line the bowl with a plastic bag -which can be closed-keeping  the paste from drying out. Flour and water will start to ferment in a couple days.) Lining the bowl also makes cleanup a snap.

If you are making the pinata early and plan on leaving it where there are bugs (garage, barn, outdoors) you can add salt to the flour and water paste to make it less attractive to bugs (yech!)

Newsprint

Newsprint has a distinct “grain” tearing into strips one-way but not the other (try it and see!). You want to tear it with the grain; you'll get a much nicer result that way. 

Tear your newprint into strips about 1 inch wide, dip them into the paste and then remove the excess paste from each strip and lay them onto the surface of the blown up balloon or form. Make sure to let the layer dry before adding another one (don't make the layer too thick as then it takes an eternity to dry and can get kind of funky-smelling!)

Piñata Construction 

As a form, use blown up balloons and small cardboard pieces taped together to make the rough form that you need (anything for that matter can be used). If you use balloons, it's better to use good quality balloons for the form and keep the drying piñata in an area without a dramatic temperature change as this can make the balloon pop before you have a good shell formed. 

Another way to construct your pinata is to form the paper mache around a special form and then slit the “soft shell” piñata down the middle to slip it off the form and then patch the slit with more papier mache.  

If you start very early then it's easy … (if you start a week before then it may be super stressful). 

It's best to embed the rope around the balloon - leaving a loop at the top- in the early papering stages.

When you have a shell that can support itself, pop the balloon and continue to put on new layers (the more layers the stronger the pinata). Don’t forget to leave a small hole/flap in the finished piñata so that you can fill it easily.

Make sure that the top of the piñata where the hanging rope is coming out of - really thick and sturdy. If the top is super strong then the unbroken piñata will not plop on the ground (very anti-climactic!).  At the same time, give the piñata a “glass jaw” making it weakest on the bottom so that it will break/open from the bottom.

For a soft piñata use 4 layers of paper or so … you can make them quite a bit thicker for older children. For teenagers/baseball players, one way to do it is to make the pinata very thick and tough and then make random “stab marks” with a knife (to introduce some weak points into the piñata).

Piñata Decoration

Go over the piñata with white house paint and a big brush/roller. (the house paint is much cheaper and seals the surface and then you need surprisingly little of the fancier (more expensive) hobby paints to decorate. Try adding rhinestones, feathers, hats, googly eyes, foil accents. Fabric paint adheres like a dream and is really nice for detail work. 

Piñata Use

It's nice to hang the piñata in the house and give it a name and enjoy it before it gets smashed (don’t forget to take a picture). Make sure to have the piñata displayed in a prominent place at the party so that it can double as a dramatic part of the decorations! Line the children up from youngest to oldest (so the heavy-hitters go last!) If you have a tree branch you can sling the supporting rope over the branch and pull up at random times to make the piñata bob up and down (to make the piñata harder to hit). 

First round, you could even use a blindfold to make it even harder to hit, to make sure that every child "gets a go". Give each kid a plastic bag with their name on it so that they can gather up all their piñata swag.

Safety Concerns

Make sure that the children line up behind you while one of the children is swinging…it would be terrible for a child to end up getting hit by the stick/bat. Make the children wait quite far from where the piñata is hanging so that the children have a ways to go before the broken piñata leaks candy. 

The child that breaks the piñata needs to put the weapon down before the children pounce! Make sure that there is nothing in the piñata or on the piñata that would hurt someone if it went flying through the air. 

When the piñata is done…. make sure that the bat/stick is put away immediately because in the aftermath of the Piñata breaking some kid will invariably pick up the bat/stick and start swinging….

One Last Tip

It is nice to have the Piñata at the very very end of the party.. as the Piñata is almost always done outside and the kids are dressed in their coats and street shoes and have their bag of goodies…. Then the parents are arriving to see the fun piñata breaking and the kids are all ready to head on their way instantaneously. (Sometimes at the end of a party you may be more than ready to say goodbye to the little ones!)