homemade pinata | Growing in Grace

I must say that I’m a bit surprised by the interest in my pins on my boys’ birthdays on pinterest. It never ceases to amaze me how much pinterest brings traffic to this blog.

Anyway, I promised back in March that I’d put up the tutorial for all you homemade moms out there. I will say, we work very hard at pleasing our children through seasons of their lives. My little big one was extremely excited about this. Though neither one of them helped. Nevertheless I stayed up til 2 am putting party stuff together for him that weekend…And you know what??? I loved it! It kicked butt in my book to put all my time and energy into my child’s birthday. I never realized how much of a homemaker I am until now. Wink wink. Well, you didn’t come here to read my voice did you? I thought so. Here is what you really want. This is a pull string pinata meant to be pulled from the bottom. All the kids had a piece of string to yank on. We didn’t have the option of hanging ours up at the party place so that is why we made it a pull string. You could easily just flip this upside down and hang it. Just make sure you secure the flaps a bit more before you do it.We cheated and made it a bit loose for the kiddos. My inspiration came from this lady.

1. Get started by gathering what you need.

A pack of punch of balloons (.97 at Walmart)
Gather a whole stack of newspaper (I used my whole circular)
Make your paste using 2 cups of water and 2 cups of flour
2 rolls crepe paper (any color you’d like)
Angry bird face printable(you could also use crepe paper to cover a party hat to make a beak and stick some black crepe paper to the butt for a fluffy tail)
Gloves (optional)
Few pieces of cardboard

Once you have your balloon all blown up to the size you would like your pinata, cut your newspaper in strips. I folded mine in fours and cut the edges. Lazy I know.

2. Dip your paper strips into your paste mixture and smooth until the excess paste runs off. Then lay your strip onto the balloon making overlapping patterns.

(Make sure you lay this out on a surface you don’t mind getting messy. I covered my table with plastic bags.)

I was pressed for time after a while and just plain didn’t feel like doing it anymore at 12 am, so I dipped multiple strips in and went to work. Afterwards I smoothed the layers with my hand. I had regular latex gloves on. It felt really weird and icky!

3. Set your balloon out to dry at least 24 hrs.

Funny story. I started on this project the night before my sons party. I knew I needed 24 hrs drying time but me being the “try it until you prove yourself wrong” mom, I did it anyway. What was my secret??? Fans. One ceiling fan and a big wind machine fan that sat on the floor. The sucker wasn’t fully dry that morning. (still a bit damp) So I let it dry a few more hours until I was done the cake. Needless to say, it can be done if you have one night and three fans at all angles.

4. Cut a square in the top after the whole thing is dry. One that is big enough for you to stuff snacks in. and keep closed. Then punch holes down the sides of the squares. (Ignore the one in the middle. Ours was a bit fragile at the top due to lack of thickness. So make sure you make the paper thick on the top and bottom where you will be pulling and stuffing.)

5. Stick some ribbon or string through the holes and tie them in knots on the inside. So you should be able to dangle the pinata by holding the strings in your hand.

6. Tape the knots down. I used gorilla tape to ensure that we’d have no trouble out of them. BOOM!

7. Fill the pinata with whatever you’d like. I love this part because I’m that mom to put out apples and string cheese at a party. I stuffed mine with a few cookies, not much candy and some other good snacks. I was talked out of putting apples in. LOL!