I saw a video on youtube of a lady making a pinata with full size A3 pieces of newspaper, unfortunately it was in spanish so I have no idea what she was saying. Have you ever used larger sheets instead of strips of paper? How does/would it effect the strength of the pinata?
Answer from Piñata Boy
The short answer is that I have never tried it, but I think it would work just fine. I don’t think the thickness of the paper itself is a major variable in how tough the piñata is. The toughness of the walls of the piñata is due to the papier-mâché paste itself, and the paper simply holds the papier-mâché together. Think of the bricks they used to make out of mud and straw in Biblical times — the cement of the brick came from the mud, and the straw simply held the mud together. Papier-mâché paste and newspaper work the same way.
I use newspaper instead of office-type paper when I make piñatas because newspaper is more absorbent. I normally use newspaper strips that are about 1 – 1.5 inches (2.5 – 4 cm) wide because they’re easy to handle, but when covering larger surfaces sometimes I’ll use strips that are about 4 inches (20 cm) wide. Wider strips cover more area but once they’re wet with papier-mâché they’re more difficult to handle without them tearing. Sometimes instead of dipping the newspaper in the papier-mâché paste, I pour the papier-mâché paste directly onto the piñata surface and lay down dry newspaper on top of it.
Laying down a large flat piece of paper like A3 (420 mm x 297 mm, or about 11″ x 17″) on a round surface will buckle and wrinkle the paper as it conforms to fit the curve, but if you’re going to decorate over it anyway and hide those wrinkles, then there should be no problem. I would expect to use the same number of layers of paper using A3 as I would with newspaper, but since I’ve never done this, I recommend letting each layer fully dry in between and testing the strength of the walls between layers to see if it’s time to stop. But I would expect the strength of the walls will result mainly from how much papier-mâché paste you’re holding in place, and not from the thickness of the paper itself.