The One Party: Pinata

Ah, the piñata.

I got the idea of making my own piñata from Sophie’s Mum and another cousin of DD’s. They regularly make piñatas for their kids’ birthdays and they assured me that it was not difficult. All I needed was a balloon, strips of paper and starch paste for paper mache, and paint or crepe paper to decorate. And lots of sweets.

I did some googling “How to make a piñata” and found a whole bunch of varying instructions. But they were mostly built around the basic premise of the balloon and paper mache. Sounded easy enough. Especially since I am a veteran of two NUS Rag & Flag Days where I paper-mached my holidays away. (Don’t ask.) I decided I’d give it a go. My original intention was to make a star-shaped piñata, so I used the directions from this website primarily.

I went out to get a bigger than usual balloon and bought a nice big 16″ balloon from a gift shop. Since I had Noey with me, I got it filled with helium as a treat for him, figuring that I could use it once the balloon lost buoyancy overnight. Which it did.

My brother had come over to help with the kids that day so I merrily roped him into the piñata making process.

Now, one of the crucial pointers which I picked up from my web research was that you must let each layer dry before you slap on the next layer. If you don’t, the layers will harden together and the piñata would be much more difficult to break. We completed the first layer in the late afternoon so I figured I’d let the paper-wrapped balloon dry overnight.

The next morning when I went to look at my balloon, I realised I had made my first error and had forgotten something crucial: helium balloons deflate much faster than regular balloons. My balloon looked visibly smaller and my paper had puckered as the balloon shrank. Ugh. So much for smooth surfaces! So if you do this, please blow up the the balloon yourself! Lung power is good!

I hastily slapped on the second layer, trying to paper over the creases, and quickly put my balloon out to dry. Thankfully this piñata was meant for toddlers and the directions generally indicated that two or at most three layers was sufficient since they obviously can’t hit very hard!

The second layer dried and it was the moment of truth: time to pop and remove the balloon! I hate popping balloons so I trotted over to my husband and asked him to help me with it. I stepped gingerly away and watched as he put the blade to the balloon and braced myself. Except. Nothing happened. Yup. My husband cut away the whole top of the balloon and the whole balloon was stuck to the paper mache!

Great. My starch paste had been too sticky. I used the method which I was familiar with, stirring flour with hot water to make starch without, erm, measuring how much I was using. Not the wisest of moves on hindsight.

So what did I do? I had no choice but to gingerly try to rip the balloon out from the inside of the cavity of my paper mache ball. I was really worried that I would rip a hole in the hardened shell and all my effort would go to waste. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.

What did happen shortly after this though was that Nomi fell really ill. And suddenly all that extra time which I thought I had to mess around with the piñata disappeared. I tried to use paper to make the points of the star around the ball but my rather lopsided star got the thumbs down from DD. Sigh. I thought it had home-made appeal?

I ripped off all the paper, and that’s how we ended up, DD and I, on the night before the party, looking at our pinata and wondering how to make it work. DD suggested that instead of a star shape, we go with a round piñata with stars pasted on. To string it up, we decided to cross-tie and DD suggested reinforcing the holes we were piercing through the piñata with masking tape. And while we were at it we decided to cover over the hole at the top of the piñata with masking tape as well before we spray painted the whole thing.

Oops, mistake.

Masking tape, when wet, loses it’s stickiness and started peeling off our pinata. It was ugly. We also made the mistake of hanging our pinata — full of sweets and toys — up to dry. Obviously when the paper mache was wet with paint, it was much less strong and with the weight of the sweets and toys, it started caving in. Horrors.

DD was so unhappy with it he wanted to abandon our pinata and make a new one. He also suggested going out to buy another one in the morning. I, on the other hand, just couldn’t let my handiwork go to waste. So I peeled off all the masking tape, taped cardboard supports to the internal structure of the ball, and made more paper mache to cover all the holes. And in the dead of night, I had to paper mache some more. And dry it with a hairdryer. And then spray paint the whole thing. THEN stick the stars on. (Ok, DD cut out and stuck the stars on.) Good thing I had leftover cooked starch paste in the fridge so I only needed to add hot water and it was good to go. Moral of the story: Don’t do things at the very last minute!

But it was done. Finally. And holding together.

When Noey fell on it in the morning and crushed it, I almost burst a blood vessel. Thankfully for him and for me, the damage was easily rectified. And the kids had fun with it at the party.

One of the reasons why I wanted to make my own pinata instead of buying one was because I wanted control over the stuff that would be in it, and I was pretty happy with the contents at the end of the day. There were small boxes of raisins, little packets of Florida’s Natural fruit nuggets, the Japanese grape gummy sweet I loved as a child (made with real fruit juice!), organic lollies, and small packets of mini m&ms and yupi gummies. There were also small yo-yo-yos and a hot favourite: the sticky spiderman toy. I was pretty happy with it in the end!

Now I’m wondering if I’m brave enough to make another one? I have 7 months till it’s Noey’s birthday to think about that!