Hi, I would like to make a Minecraft TNT-pinata for my son’s birthday party. The shape is a simple cube, but I’m worried that cardboard will be too hard to break. How could I shape papier mache into a cube without using a cardboard box? Thanks!
Answer from Piñata Boy
It’s hard to make a nice, flat surface using papier mâché. I’ve tried laying out newspaper on a plastic tablecloth and applying papier mâché to that, but the newspaper soaked up the liquid and became wavy. Even a thicker base than newspaper, such as thin cardboard, can absorb enough water from the papier mâché strips to become wavy. I have even tried applying papier mâché around a square plastic container — this kind of worked, but the papier mâché tore when it was being removed, and had to be repaired. So although I spent many years avoiding thin cardboard (or worse yet, corrugated cardboard) in my piñatas, sometimes that’s the best choice.
The good news is that you can always weaken the walls of a tough piñata so that the kids can break it. Sometimes I’ll weaken the walls of the piñata where I want it to break by stabbing holes in it with a knife, then decorate over the holes to hide them. You can also score the walls of a piñata with a razor blade or an Xacto knife to weaken it. The scoring lines can go partway through the cardboard, or can even go all the way through the cardboard to create very weak spots for younger kids.
If you’re using a corrugated cardboard box and weakening it with score lines, you can decorate right over the cardboard and save yourself the time and trouble of applying papier mâché. I know that sounds like a cheap factory-made piñata shortcut, but the important thing is that the piñata is breakable, not that it is made of papier mâché. So grab a suitable box, weaken the sides with a razor blade, and see how it feels. (Make sure you don’t weaken it too much — you still want the piñata to hold its cubic shape even with the weight of the candy inside.) Then decorate right over the cardboard, or if you prefer, glue on some ordinary computer paper to hide the brown color of the cardboard before decorating.
The biggest problem with breaking store-bought cardboard piñatas is that they have not been weakened, so they can be almost impossible to break open. If you’ve weakened the walls of your box to make it breakable by your players, you can make a successful Minecraft piñata out of a cardboard box without going through the time and trouble of using papier mâché.
Good luck!