Hello, I am curious how would you suggest I should make a medium (about 20 inches) whiskey bottle piñata and where would I add the hook? I am thinking to add it on top…would side be better? I am thinking of using the thicker cardboard, cutting them into stripes to make the body or can I use it the cardboard without cutting it and making holes for the weak point?
Answer from Piñata Boy
If I were making a bottle-shaped piñata (assume it’s a round bottle, not a square Jack Daniels type bottle), I would think of it in terms of six pieces:
- The main body of the bottle would be a cylinder made of thin cardboard.
- To make the shoulder of the bottle I would blow up a balloon and fit it into the top of the body cylinder.
- The neck would be another cylinder such as a toilet paper tube or paper towel tube. The neck can be tapered by making a lengthwise slit along the entire length of the tube, then curling it in on itself a little more at the top than at the bottom, and taping it in place, so the base of the neck has a larger diameter than the top.
This gives you the basic bottle shape, but this has an abrupt transition where the shoulder of the bottle meets the bottom of the neck and you want a smooth transition there, so I would make a collar out of thin cardboard to cover the abrupt transition from the balloon to the toilet paper tube.
Then add
- A circular bottom of the bottle made from corrugated cardboard. You want a stiff piece of cardboard here to help the bottle hold its round shape.
- A cap for the bottle using thick cardboard or craft foam. The cap is just a circle to close off the top and a strip of cardboard or foam wrapped around the top of the toilet paper tube to serve as the side of the bottle cap and give the cap some dimension.
When making the body of the bottle out of thin cardboard, I would wrap it around a cylinder-shaped object like a can or something because when you apply papier mâché to thin cardboard, the cardboard absorbs water and becomes warped and wavy, so you need to wrap the cardboard around something to force it to maintain its shape.
To make a square Jack Daniels type bottle, I would probably still use thin cardboard for the body of the bottle, but still wrap it around something rectangular to prevent it from warping when the papier mâché is applied.
I would put the hanging hook on the shoulder of the bottle so that it hangs on an angle. If you put the hook at the top of the bottle, make sure the neck of the bottle is indestructible, or one well-placed blow can separate the hanging hook from the rest of the piñata. You can place the hook on the side of the bottle and it would hang sideways, or place it on bottom half of the side (maybe about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom) so that the bottle hangs pointed downward, like it’s being poured. In that case I think I would not put a cap on the bottle, and instead find some tissue paper the color of whiskey and have it coming out of the top of the bottle to create a “pouring” effect.
Good luck!