Dragon's egg pinata

The first piñata I made was for a Star Wars themed birthday party. I barely knew what a piñata was, much less knew how they were supposed to be made, but figured making something that could be smashed open couldn't be hard. I cut out a bunch of hexagons and pentagons out of thick cardboard and assembled a truncated icosahedron with the help of lots of masking tape. Unsure whether that would be sufficiently strong to withstand the depredations of a pack of armed and enthusiastic eight-year olds, I papier-mached the outside, spray painted it grey and hung it from a tree as the Death Star. The Jedi younglings swung at it with gusto and barely scratched the surface. We equipped them with ever heavier weaponry, and it finally took sustained beating with a heavy broomstick until they were all nearly exhausted, whereupon it split slightly; frenzied tearing and kicking eventually freed the candy. This mayhem was all so much fun that nearly-indestructible, geometrical piñata have become a feature of our kids' birthday parties. An octopus with a cuboctahedral head for a pool party... a big top tent made of a capped hexagonal prism for a circus party... you get the picture. This year, I made another truncated icosahedron (aka buckyball aka C₆₀ aka soccer ball), this time extended with another five hexagons (to mimic another allotrope of carbon, C₇₀), as a dragon's egg for my son's Harry Potter themed party.

Step 1 You'll need...

Thick cardboard ~ Tissue paper ~ Masking tape ~ Glue ~ Scissors ~ Paint ~ Protractor ~ Ruler

Comments

[unclejoeyv]

I really like this idea. I want to build a pinata for adults to throw around so this looks like it might last a while. I was wondering, though, how big your final product was and how long the sides of the shapes were. I constructed a couple small models, 1 with .5 inch sides and 1 with .5 inch sides and the size difference it quite great. the first turned out a bit smaller than a baseball and the second was more on par with a softball.

[makendo]

The pinata is long destroyed, but I can actually answer that question, because the template I used was a Settlers of Catan tile. Each edge is 46 mm (1 13/16"). It ended up about the size of an elongated basketball. It is tough to break, for sure. Good luck with the build.

[unclejoeyv]

Thanks! I'll let you know how it turns out! I think I'm going to go with a side length of 2.25. That should make things interesting

[pfeng]

I like the geometric solid idea better than using a balloon. Thanks for putting this together!

Do you think pasteboard (old cereal boxes which I often have on hand) would work instead of corrugated cardboard (which I don't often have on hand)?

[makendo]

Thanks. Yes, pasteboard would work well. One of the issues with corrugated cardboard is that it makes the pinata almost too strong to be broken by kids, so pasteboard would probably strike a happy medium: a lot tougher than just papier mache, but not so tough that it takes too long to smash up.

[Puzzledd]

Nice one- This looks like lots of fun (and a lot quicker to make than the papier mache Donkey Kong head pinata I made once - it seemed to take weeks).

[makendo]

Thanks. I had plenty of willing assistants, so the cutting & assembly took less than an hour and the papier mache-ing half that. It was finished in a couple of days, including drying time.