I am making a ‘guardian’ pinata from Legend of Zelda for my son which has a cylindrical head and a cone-shaped base. Someone suggested I use corrugated cardboard rolls, but all I can find come in 250 ft and that’s way too much. Others suggested poster-board, but that seems to flimsy. What else could I use for this? Poster board covered with paper machete?
Answer from Piñata Boy
You can get large sheets of thin corrugated cardboard from Sam’s (and probably Costco), in the toilet paper and paper towel area. Some of the stacks have thin cardboard between the layers of paper, and some have thin corrugated cardboard. One sheet of this cardboard won’t be enough to make the cone you want, but you can take two of them, overlap them a few inches, and masking tape them together on both sides. If you roll up the cardboard sheet along the corrugations before you start, it’ll be easy to roll into a cone. Once you’ve rolled it into a cone shape you’ll have to trim the cone to size.
It’s possible to use poster board or thin cardboard to make the cone, but when you apply the papier mâché, the thin cardboard or poster board will absorb water and become wavy. I always recommend that when applying papier mâché to thin cardboard you have some kind of internal support to help minimize distortion of the shape when it absorbs water.
Another option is if you have a good cone-shaped support that you can apply papier mâché to, wrap it in plastic (to prevent the papier mâché from sticking to it) then in newspaper, then apply papier mâché over that. For the neck of the Rainbow Zebra, I took a laminated wall map of the world, rolled it into a cone, stuck a balloon inside the cone to keep it from collapsing, and then wrapped it in newspaper and applied papier mâché over that.
Good luck!