Anyone can go to the grocery store
and buy a piñata, but what is the fun in that. Not only is a store bought
piñata is expensive, it is not made of love. Making a piñata is fun and it is
very cheap to make too. I have made a couple of piñatas myself and there are so
easy. In my English 1101 class my teacher assigned a process analysis project.
The project had to be at least 5 hours. I thought that making a piñata would be
perfect and would exceed the time that had been assigned. After I explain how
easy and fun making one is, there is no need to ever buy one ever again!
Most of the materials needed for
this project are can be found in a house already, such as water and newspaper.
Other materials that are needed; are glue, 1 balloon, 1 ball, a pack of yellow
and black tissue paper, construction paper, cardboard, duct tape, clear tape, a
brown paper grocery bag, and candy of your choice. Overall I only spent 8 dollars;
some stuff I already had just lying around my household. The rest of the
material I bought from Wal-Mart.
I started to work on my project
Monday the twenty-third of March, at 2 in the afternoon and ended at 6:45pm
that same night. Then I began my preparation for the making of my piñata. The
very first there to do when starting to make a piñata, is to rip out a lot of
strips of newspaper. The strips should be about 1 inch wide and 3-4 inches
long. Any longer strips will not flatten, they will leave bumps. Next is the
messy part; the glue paste. The recipe for the paste is glue and water. I used
2 parts glue to 1 part water. Use a medium-sized bowl for this. Once both the
glue and water is in the bowl, stir with a fork until the mixer is smooth. For
the head I used a small ball that I bought from Albertsons grocery store. For
the body, I used a balloon that I already had at my house. The size of the
balloon does not really matter; blow the balloon up to the desired size. Lastly
make sure to place down some newspaper over your work area to prevent having a
big mess to clean up.
I
started with the balloon, which will be the body of the piñata. Take 1 strip of
newspaper and cover it with the paste mixer. Try to get most of the paste mixer
off. I learned that the hard way. I had already done just about 2 layers of the
paper mache and my balloon pops. I felt very discouraged at this moment. I just
spent about an hour applying many pieces of newspaper to the balloon. The
reason the balloon popped was because of some sort of chemical reaction with
the balloon and paste mixer. The newspaper was way too wet and I was not going
to let the same thing happen again. After that I had to bowl up another
balloon. It is very smart to have extra balloons if some freak accident happens
like this one did to me. When applying the strips on my new balloon, I ran my
fingers down the newspaper to remove the excess paste. Then I placed the strip
onto the balloon, next place another overlapping the first strip just a little
bit. I continued this process until I had done 3-4 layers of paper mache. I
left a space around the balloon tied, so once the paper has dried I can pop the
balloon. Then I did the same thing with the ball, except I left a little space
around the whole center of the ball. After all of this has been done, let dry
for a day.
On Wednesday the twenty-fifth 2pm, I
checked to make sure my paper mache all dry. It had all dried, but sadly the
paper mache was not hard like it should be. I checked the paper mache around
the ball and it was perfectly harden and hallow. Instead of starting the whole
thing over with, I added 2 more layers of paper mache. In order for me to
finish my project that same day, I used my blow dryer to speed up the drying
process. Then I popped the balloon and removed the paper mache off of the ball.
To fill my piñata, I used a variety of jolly rancher candy. I put the candy
through the hole where the balloon tie once used to be. After that
I used tape to one the paper mache that once was a ball shape. Once taped back
together, it looks like a ball once again.
Next I cut apart a brown paper bag and rolled 2
pieces into pointed ears. Then I used duct tape to put the head on top of the
body. I also taped the ears to the head.
Next
I cut out arms and a tail; I used cardboard from an old Campbell’s Soup box. I
also taped them to the body. Next I decorated the piñata to make it look like
Pikachu. I cut the yellow tissue paper into long strips that were at least an inch
long. I then cut slits in the paper into the center of the paper. I began at
the bottom and eventually got to the tip of the ears. I wrapped the tissue paper around the body and
used clear tape to stick it on the paper mache. After the whole thing was covered
in yellow tissue paper, I used black tissue paper for the tips of the ears and
2 stripes along the back. Lastly, I used black, red, and white construction
paper, for the face. Once I had taped the eyes, mouth, nose, and rosy cheeks to
the face, I was done (see fig 4 and fig 5). I completed the whole piñata at 7pm
that night. The whole project took me just about ten hours.
I would definitely recommend making
a homemade piñata over just buying a piñata. It is fun and very simple to do.
It is very time consuming, but it goes by very fast. It actually took a lot
longer than I ever imagined it would take. The overall experience is great, I
felt very accomplished, and I ended up with an amazing piñata. I thought I made
the piñata just the same way Pikachu should look like. I gave it to my friend
Stephanie and she loved it. Seeing the smile on her face was worth all the hard
work that I had put in.
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