Make a Pinata with stuff you already have

1.The first step in making a pinata is to gather things from around your house. Look for different sized boxes (you can use food boxes from your cabinet), bags, tissue, construction paper, paper towel tubes, toilet paper tubes, paper bags, just about anything carboard or paper that you can cut!

Other items you will need are:
Scissors
tape
glue
glue gun (if you have one)
paint (optional)

2.First get a main box that will become the body of your pinata. Then play around with your boxes and tubes. Line them up, move them around and see what animal or object starts to take shape. For instance, you can use paper towel tubes for arms and legs and make a person or use smaller tubes for legs of an animal.

Since I did this project with my boys, they both decided to make tanks! Using a paper towel tube for the cannon and a box for the body.

I decided to make a dog using toilet paper tubes for legs and boxes for the body and head.

3.After you have decided what sort of Pinata to make the next step is to assemble it. If you are using tubes in your boxes you will need to cut holes in your body box. When cutting a whole for a tube you will want to make it slightly smaller than the tube so it fits in tightly.

After your hole is cut you will need to tape or glue your tube in place to give it strength. We used hot glue around the edge of the tube and then stuck it in the hole just enough to hold it.

4.After we finished gluing in our tubes in place we started cutting out details from cardboard. My sons cut out wheels for their tanks and glued them along the edge of the box. Since they did not want their tanks to look exactly the same my 12 yr old made his taller by taping smaller boxes on top of the tank body to give it more height.

Once the bodies were assembled they really started to take shape. You should be creative at this point and add details to your Pinata. Look at pictures for inspiration and don't be afraid to experiment! For example, if you are making a person cut out big hands from cardboard and glue them on. If you are making an animal, use a long box to make a neck. In the next step I'll show you how I made mine.

5.If you decide to make an animal as I did you may want to make a neck for the head to go on. I used a oatmill box and cut off the bottom. Then to make it glue on the edge, I cut both ends in a triangle so it lined up along the side. Once I got it as close to the box as possible I used hot glue to stick it on the side. You could also tape this, but school glue would probably take to long to dry.

You could also just glue a box right on the side if you didn't want to cut it out like this. Creativity is key and there is no wrong way! You could even use a paper towel tube for the neck and make a long skinny one!

6.Once you have assembled your Pinata and added all your details it is time to decorate it. You can use tissue paper like tradional Pinatas or try somthing new! We used construction paper and paint, but you could use fabric, toilet paper, yarn ect.

To cover ours with construction paper we just applied glue to the box and started covering it with paper. Once it is glued on you can go back and cut any overlap or just wrap it around the box. My 8 yr old used paper for his, but my other son decided to paint his since there was a lot of detail. If your Pinata has many corners and different heights, you may want to do this also.

7.I decided to do a little of both for my Pinata. I covered the body with paper, but decided to paint on a face.

I first cut out a flat design of a dog head and then glued it onto the neck. Once the body was completely papered I went back and added spots cut out from different colors.

This is were it gets fun! You can add any kind of details to yours that you want. Paint on spots and clothes. Add some bling by gluing on beads and pieces of fabric. The key is to use your imagination and make it up as you go along!

8.Once you have finished your decorating you will have fun folk art Pinatas! My boys liked their's so much they decided to not fill them with candy, but keep them in their rooms! They told me I could fill mine with candy though, and they would love to smash it! Gotta love those kids!!!

If you want to fill yours with candy just cut a small hole in the body box you used, and fill it up! Tie a string through the top or use wire, and hang it from a tree! These are great to make for birthday parties and they are easy and fast. Believe me, the more you make them the easier they become. Your be a Pinata maker in no time!