DIY Pineapple Pinata

Summer Craft: Pineapple Pinata!

Hello everyone! This is one of my first blog posts. I'm very excited to share this craft with you all. Last summer I made a list of fun activities that I hoped would keep my four siblings and I entertained in the months before going back to school. One of my ideas was a picnic in the park. But not just any picnic. I wanted it to have a theme. And that is when I decided to craft a Pineapple Pinata for our Pineapple Picnic in the park! It was so much fun making this craft and I was able to buy all the materials at the Dollar Tree. Awesome, right?

So here we go!

List of Materials:

To Make the Base:

Lots of Newspaper (one whole newspaper should do the trick but to be on the safe side I'd have another ready to go)

1 Balloon

Bowl or Cup

All-Purpose Baking Flour

Water

Scissors

Heavy Twine

Duct Tape

To Fill:

Candy, Little Toys, Confetti, Whatever you want!

To Decorate:

Yellow and Green Crepe Streamers

Cardboard Toilet Paper Roll

Green Construction Paper

Glitter or Rhinestones (if you want to get fancy)

Step One (Make the base): Blow up the balloon and place it on the cup with the tied end faced down. Cut 1 to 2 inch strips of the newspaper. You are going to need a lot of strips to cover the entire balloon in a few layers to make sure it is strong. Then mix about 1/2 cup flour and a little more than a 1/2 cup water to make the paste. Start dunking your pieces of newspaper in the glue mixture. I used my fingers to scraps some of the glue off if it felt too heavy. Then place the strips on the balloon. Once it is completely covered add a few more layers (I did 3 in total). After you have all the layers let it dry! *Should take a couple of hours and its even better when leaving over night.

Step Two (Fill): Once the newspaper is completely dry, take your scissors and make a small incision in the balloon which will deflate it. Take out the remains of the balloon. Then, take your scissors and poke two holes near the top of the pinata on either side of the hole (be careful to not poke too close to the hole in case it leads to ripping). Thread a 2 to 3 foot long piece of twine between the two holes so that you have a way to hang the pinata. Finally, fill the pinata with all your treats! After I filled the pinata I covered the hole with a few layers of duct tape so no treats escaped.

This is the twine I used and it worked perfectly!

Step Three (Decorate): Okay, now I don't suggest doing what I did. I just wanted to make it extra challenging and spend more time crafting by decorating the bottom with a pattern of rhinestones that I picked up at the Dollar Store. By all means skip this step, or experiment with any decoration you want!

To get the yellow spikes around the entire pinata I took the crepe streamers and created folds. Then I cut along the edge in a zigzag motion and unfolded the streamer to see all the gagged edges. Then paste your streamers onto the pinata base.

I also painted the newspaper base yellow, but this step is not necessary

To make the top stem of the pineapple I cut leaf shapes out of construction paper and glued them onto the toilet paper roll. I bent the paper at the tips to make it look more characteristically pineapple like. Then I glued that bad boy on the top to cover the duct tape covered hole.