So my sons first birthday is construction themed so I’m making a traffic cone. I’m using a real cone as my model with foil and then paper Mache over it. However I’m not quite sure on how to go about hanging it. I’ve read on a few blogs to make it a little stronger on the top and then drill a hole through both sides then put a rope through. What is your advice? Thank you
Answer from Piñata Boy
Normally I’m not a big fan of hanging a piñata by drilling two holes in it and running a string or rope through it, because the string exerts a lot of pressure against the papier mâché as the piñata is getting whacked, and the string can tear along the piñata wall until the whole thing falls to the ground. But with a piñata shaped like a traffic cone, a string through the sides is probably more reliable than a hook at the top. Just make sure the sides of the piñata are reinforced so that the string is absolutely positively not going to tear through the papier mâché. If it were me I would reinforce the sides of the cone around the top with a couple layers of thin cardboard (like cereal box cardboard) to help prevent the string from tearing through the papier mâché.
Since you’ve already got a traffic cone covered in foil, you can just wrap a couple layers of thin cardboard around the top of the sides of the cone before applying the papier mâché. Then build the piñata as you normally would, and you can even add some extra papier mâché around the top just to be safe. You can also skip the cardboard and just use extra layers of papier mâché if you want, just make sure the papier mâché around the top of the piñata is rock solid before you drill holes and run the string through. My experience is that papier mâché tears a lot more easily than thin cardboard, so when I really don’t want a section of a piñata to break I like to reinforce it with cardboard.
By the way, the easiest way to run a string through two holes in a piñata is to stick a stiff wire through the holes first, then hook it onto the string and pull the wire (and string) back out.
Good luck!