Hi, I was wondering if you could make and ship this pinata to me? Or if not, do you have any advice on how to make this one? I am looking at making a monster from the book Where the Wild Things Are. Thanks!
Answer from Piñata Boy
I don’t make piñatas to sell — I prefer to help people make their own piñatas, so here are a few tips if you want to try to make one like this.
This is what I call a structural piñata, which means it’s made up of many pieces all attached together before the decorating. Imagine what this piñata would look like without the decorations. You’ve got the head, the body, and the arms and legs. The way the arms and legs are bent, you might make each of them in two pieces.
The head could be made from a balloon, and the details of the face can be added during the decorating. The body could be made from a balloon or from a large piece of thin cardboard that has been rolled into a tube shape. The arms and legs could be made from either thin cardboard or from balloons. Once you’ve created the individual pieces, you tape them together with masking tape, cement everything together with papier mâché, and then decorate.
If I were making this, I would make the general body shape first, then do another round of papier mâché where I add the face, claws, and horns. I would make the eyes and nose out of wadded-up newspaper that is covered with papier mâché, the horns could be shaped from toilet paper tubes that were crunched and curled into shape and then smoothed over with masking tape, and the claws could be made from thin cardboard or poster board. When all those pieces are added and covered over with papier mâché, then it’s time to decorate.
This one was decorated using tissue paper and paint. The scales on the legs are made from two different colors of tissue paper. Yours doesn’t have to be this elaborate to be successful, because this character is so distinctive that everyone will immediately recognize him for who he is.
Good luck!
Hello
I’m making the piñata of this Monster( where the wild things)
And I was wondering if you can help
Do you have videos or pictures step by step of how you cut the paper for the monster’s head and if is crepe or tissue paper
Thanks
I didn’t make this piñata — this photo was sent by the person who asked the question. The brown fringe on the monster’s head looks like tissue paper, but you could use crepe paper for this as well. First I’ll describe how I would do it with crepe paper, then how I would do it with tissue paper.
With crepe paper, I buy a roll of streamer streamer from a party store and then make cuts about 1½ inches long across the crepe paper. This leaves about a ¼-inch “backbone” along one edge of the crepe paper, which I glue down onto the piñata (http://pinataboy.com/make-your-own/decorating-with-crepe-paper/).
Tissue paper is usually sold in large sheets instead of rolls, so you first have to cut it into strips to use it to decorate a piñata. If you wanted to make fringe that was 1½” long, you could cut the tissue paper sheet into strips that are about 1¾ to 2″ wide. Then you glue down the backbone, leaving the fringe sticking up from the surface.
You could also fold the tissue paper before cutting it to create a double-layer of fringe. In this case for fringe that is 1½” long, fold the tissue paper and then cut it to create a long strip that is about 3½” wide and two layers thick. Then make the snips from the open side opposite the fold, so you have two rows of fringe with a solid backbone in the middle along the fold. If you glue it down onto the piñata from the fold in the middle, you are adding two rows of fringe at once.
Good luck!