My daughter is having a princess and Knights Birthday party September 6 th and I really want a dragon pinata! After making her giraffe pinata last year I vowed to never make another one lol but this dragon is just too perfect to pass it up!
Answer from Piñata Boy
I don’t have any step-by-step instructions for making the dragon piñata and I didn’t take very many photos while making them because I made them in 2001 before I ever imagined putting up a web site like this. I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, but maybe the parts I still remember will prove useful.
First of all, the dragon piñata is a structural piñata, which means I made several body parts and then attached them together to build the dragon. Each body part was made separately. I didn’t attach the pieces together until the final layer of papier mâché on each piece was dry. The exceptions to this are the belly/haunches and installing the head. These will be described in more detail.
The lower half of the dragon is made up of the belly, the haunches, the feet, and the tail. The upper half is made up of the chest/neck piece, the head, and the small arms. To attach the pieces, the parts were first taped together using masking tape then cemented in place using two layers of papier mâché. This means that where the pieces were joined together, the papier mâché could end up being five or six layers thick. The wings are not part of the papier mâché stage and were added later.
Check out the photos of the Green Dragon and Smaug for clarification as you read this:
THE BELLY AND HAUNCHES
I started with a large balloon for the belly and wrapped it in newspaper.
Then I made the haunches by taking two long balloons (like the ones used for making balloon animals) and bending them into a kind of oval shape. I taped them to hold them in place, then – and this is important – I stretched many pieces of masking tape across the face of the oval to form a kind of mesh. Then I wrapped the ovals in newspaper and taped them onto the sides of the belly. The reason for creating that mesh out of masking tape is to prevent the face of the oval from collapsing inward when the wet papier mâché is applied. You can see a picture of what I’m talking about on the Make a Heart page. With the heart piñata I added the masking tape mesh after wrapping in newspaper; either way works. If you add the tape before wrapping the balloon in newspaper, the tape will eventually be removed with the balloon. If you wrap the balloon in newspaper first, the tape will become part of the piñata and will provide more strength to the haunch. It probably would have been better apply the masking tape mesh after wrapping the haunches in newspaper, but I did it before. It still worked just fine.
Once the haunches and belly were wrapped and taped together, I put a few layers of papier mâché over the whole thing to hold it together. Once it was sturdy enough, which probably took three or four layers of papier mâché, I popped the balloons and pulled them out, then patched up the holes this created.
THE FEET
In my dragon piñatas the weight of the dragon rested on the feet and tail, and the belly was lifted slightly off the ground. It doesn’t have to be done that way. You can make a dragon where the belly rests on the ground and the feet and tail just stop it from rolling over. I don’t remember exactly how I made the feet – most likely I cut out a footprint for each foot from corrugated cardboard to make sure the foot would rest flat on the ground, and then built up the foot by taping wadded up or folded newspaper onto the cardboard footprint. Finally the whole thing would have been wrapped in newspaper and then covered in papier mâché. The feet are not a target area of the piñata, so they don’t need to be hollow and breakable.
THE TAIL
I also don’t remember exactly how I made the tail. It was probably long balloons wrapped in newspaper. The best view of the tail is on the Smaug page in the party pictures. The tail was thick at the base and aimed downward so that it would touch the ground and help support the piñata, then it turned upward as it tapered toward a thin tip. The spade-shaped piece on the end of the tail was made from poster board. There were two poster board spades taped onto the tail, one on top and one underneath. Their edges were taped together all the way around and then everything cemented over with papier mâché.
Once the belly/haunches, the feet, and the tail are attached, the bottom half of the dragon can stand on its own and I am ready to attach the top half of the dragon.
THE CHEST AND NECK
The chest and neck are a cone made of papier mâché. There are a few different ways of making a papier mâché cone. What I did was take a large laminated world map, roll it into a cone, and support it from the inside with a ball or something to keep it from collapsing in on itself. Then I taped a layer or two of newspaper over the cone and covered the newspaper with three or four layers of papier mâché, one at a time. The chest/neck has to be stiff enough to support the arms and the weight of the head. When it was done I trimmed it around the bottom to fit the belly, then taped it on and cemented it in place with papier mâché.
THE ARMS
The arms were made from a long balloon covered in papier mâché and then cut short to the appropriate length. I left them open on the ends – later I’ll add the claws and then hide the ends by decorating over everything with green crepe paper.
THE HEAD
The dragon’s head was made by wrapping a smaller balloon in newspaper, but instead of wrapping it all the way around, I left one end open. You can see this in one of the photos on the Green Dragon page. In that photo the body and arms are all fully covered in papier mâché, and the head is a balloon wrapped in newspaper before the first layer of papier mâché is applied. I would have somehow propped up the hollow newspaper that is sticking out as the dragon’s face. Since that newspaper can’t support much weight, I probably used another balloon.
I don’t remember how I shaped the face itself. The nostrils were cut out of card stock or poster board and taped on, then papier mâchéd over. To shape the nostrils I just cut out a circle from card stock, then cut a straight line from the edge of the circle to the center, and then slid the card stock over itself until it was the shape I was looking for.
THE WINGS
The wings were framed from wire shirt hangers. I think I used two hangers, one for each wing. I don’t remember if I attached them on the inside or on the outside of the dragon’s back. Attaching them to the outside would be easier. The two spines on the dragon’s wings also had pieces of wire shirt hanger in them. These would have been shorter pieces, twisted with pliers onto the main wing frame, and taped in place. I decorated the wings with sheets of crepe paper, but sheets of tissue paper would work just as well. You could even try using wrapping paper or colored craft paper. I covered the wire framing with an additional length of crepe paper.
THE HANDS
The claws were made from pieces of wire shirt hangers bent back double so that there were no sharp points on the ends, then covered with papier mâché. This was actually harder than it needed to be – you can just use almost any bendable wire for the fingers. If you look closely at the finished sculpture picture on the Green Dragon page you can see the finished hands. The claws are made from white card stock and were just slid onto the fingers and glued on.
THE FLAMES
This was the easiest part. I just got a few sheets of tissue paper – red, orange, yellow, and white. I laid them on top of one another, rotating them slightly so all the corners didn’t line up. I put my fist into the middle and used my other hand to pull up the paper around my arm. Then I stuck my hand into the dragon’s mouth and removed it carefully, leaving the flames there.
THE HANGING HOOK
The hanging hook should go in the belly, or at worst in the upper back, but not in the head. My first dragon was hung from his head, and got decapitated at the party. The neck is the weakest point in the piñata.
THE HARDEST PART OF ALL THIS
The wings gave me the most trouble. They actually went together very easily on the Green Dragon, and when I tried to do the exact same thing a couple months later on Smaug, the wings kept flopping forward and wouldn’t stay back. I think Smaug’s back might have been at a slightly more forward angle than the Green Dragon’s, causing the wings to fall forward instead of remain upright. So be prepared for the wings to give you a little trouble until you get them worked out. If they’re not staying where you want them you can probably prop them up with some cardboard and then hide the cardboard in the decorating.
Get started right away, because structured piñatas like this have more steps and require more drying time, so the overall process takes longer. If you get stuck, post your question as a reply to this and I’ll do my best to help. Good luck!