Homemade Piñata – The Death Star

Keeping with our Star Wars theme for Derek’s birthday party we are making our own piñata.

It will be a great craft project – learning paper mache. And it will be cheap!

We tore up a few pages of newspaper.

It was fun to show the kids how they will rip straight down! Derek discovered he could rip several pages folded in half.

(We made wayyy toooo much! But I didn’t know and we had a lot of fun ripping!)

This is an old beach ball that had holes in it. We taped it up to keep the air in.

I made paste out of flour and water.

We did this project outside!

Here is our first coat.

The paste made a huge mess. Unfortunately mom wasn’t so fun in the middle of this project when they were dripping the paste all over the table, the ground their feet, arms & clothes.

It took some scrubbing to get it off the table and our hands. Thank goodness we did this outside.

I used a strainer as the prop. It was wide enough for the ball and air could circulate to dry it.

The next morning I set it out to dry in the sun. We left for church and came home to a very dry ball with a huge crack. The air in the beach ball expanded in the heat and broke it open. My husband thought I would be disappointed. It worked out fine. I was able to deflate the beach ball and pull it out. Then I filled it with candy. I inserted a coat hanger that I folded up and left the hanger part out. Then I taped over the crack and started another coat of newspaper.

This time I did it using watered down elmer’s school glue. This made a much easier process, much cleaner and the results were MUCH more smooth. I did 2 more layers. Each layer took about half and hour to do and I left it to dry overnight.

On to painting.

Our house is a greyish color and the perfect color for the death star.

Here is Derek painting.

Hanging up for the paint to dry.

I used a Sharpie to draw in the details.

READY TO PARTY !