DIY Angry Bird Piñata

Last year, we made a Lego piñata for Trevor's birthday. The year before that, a zebra piñata. As far as I'm aware, party stores don't sell Lego or zebra pinatas. Even if they did, I'm a DIY kind of person. Why spend good money when I can do it myself and with a much cuter result? This is why we made our own Angry Bird piñata this year.

The stores definitely sell Angry Bird piñatas, so I could have taken the easy route this birthday, especially after my Blue & Gold piñata experience in February, where the balloon popped before the paper mache had set. Ugh. As it turned out, we'd have a similar problem with the Angry Bird piñata, but, of course, I didn't know that when we started.

The first step in making our Angry Bird piñata was to blow up the punch balloon that Trevor had received in a goodie bag a few weeks earlier. Its perfectly round shape would be ideal for an Angry Bird. After it was inflated, Trevor played with it for about an hour.

 

Then, we got to work adding the paper mache. And when I say "we," I mean I did the paper mache and Trevor took my picture. He hates the feel of paper mache. When it was covered with multiple layers, I set it aside to dry.  

Notice all the oranges on the island?

Within an hour, the sphere was no longer spherical. This time, the balloon didn't bulge or pop. Instead, it had a slow leak, which made the top collapse inward. Sigh. I have literally made dozens, if not hundreds, of piñatas in my life without a problem. Now twice in a row, I get a faulty balloon? I debated starting over, but decided to use the same method to disguise the collapsed area as I did a few months ago.

We bent a wire clothes hanger and wedged it inside, added the candy, and sealed up the top. Then we painted the piñata with a red base coat and added a white tummy. Then we started the tedious process of adding tissue paper squares, one by one. By increasing the size of the squares, you can disguise a flat section, making the whole thing appear perfectly round. 

 

When about 1/3 of the red was done, I added a yellow cardstock beak.

 

We finished most of the red, then added some angry eyes, also made of cardstock. As you can see, we're working on the dining room table with the piñata sitting in a plastic container to keep it from rolling.

 

Here's the piñata with everything done except the bottom. At that point, I moved the piñata to the chandelier so we could cover the bottom without squishing any of the sides. 

 

Once that was done, the last step was to add the eyebrows, top knot, and tail, all made from cardstock. Here's the finished piñata.

Here's a side view so that you can see his tail.  

It's hard to believe, but tomorrow I'm actually going to be encouraging children to destroy it with a baseball bat...