DIY: Circus Big Top Pinata

Over the weekend Hugh and I decided to have a go at making a pinata for his birthday party. Why make one and not buy one? Why not? Generally, I find making things like this so much more gratifying than just going out and buying it, and "doing it yourself" is a way of thinking that I like to impart to my boys whenever I can. Besides, you end up with exactly what you want instead of having to compromise to what's available... so, in the spirit of all things "circus" we couldn't think of anything better than a big top to model our creation on. Here's a step by step tutorial of how it came together...

1. With an old corrugated cardboard box broken down flat we made a cylinder and fastened the join with masking tape. 2. using the cylinder as a guide we traced a circle on a second piece for the bottom and taped it al together with masking tape. 3. Cut triangles from the leftover cardboard and tape them together to for a cone and tape to the top of the cylinder (there are 8 triangles in the shot below but we took one off to leave an opening so we can later fill the pinata with goodies). The number of triangles you'll need will depend on the diameter of your cylinder. We didn't use any measurements but made it up as we went and it all worked fine...

4. For the decoration we didn't have any crepe paper so we used red and white laser printer paper - either will work well. Cut strips of paper about 7cm (3") wide (we cut an A4 sheet lengthways into thirds) and then snip a fringed edge almost all the way through leaving a little bit at the top for gluing. 5. Glue the fringed strips onto the structure overlapping as you go. We started out using sticky tape for this but glue (just PVA craft glue) worked much better we learned a little way into it. 6. Using a contrasting colour (we used yellow) cut a bunting/banner type strip to wrap around the top of your walls. 7. Cut a small circle from the same colour to sit on top of your cone shape to cover up the untidy bit at the top where all your fringing joins up. 8. We made a flag from some old silver gift wrap we had in the craft box - cut into a triangle shape and wrapped around a skewer fastened with sticky tape and stuck through the tip of the cone. 9. In the name of environmentalism we poked all our scrap leftover bits of paper inside the pinata to cascade out when it gets broken party day. Voila!