Pinatas DIY Tutorial – Heart

A beginner friendly tutorial on how to make your own original pinata designs.

Do you want to be the life of the party and give a gift kids AND adults will love? Then learn how to make a pinata! They are personal and customize-able to fit the interest of the person you are making it for, that includes you!

From Hello Kitty to Mario to holiday themed pinatas; give yourself the gift that keeps on giving! Teach yourself once and have a forever skill!

So, what do you need to begin? Well, let’s start off with the materials; you’re going to want cardboard, the thinner the better. I like to use empty food package containers from cereal, biscuits, snacks or delivery packages. You’re going to want streamers, you can buy these at your local dollar or party store, or use this link to buy some online. You’re going to want string, twine, yarn, or a thick string. For an easier process you’re going to want to use hot glue, it’s faster and sticks well, however don’t worry if you don’t have a hot glue gun you can proceed with this craft using tape, masking tape is best, but any tape works. And that’s it!

Getting Started

So to recap you’re going to need the following materials.

-Streamers

-Cardboard boxes (ex. empty cereal boxes, food packaging, delivery boxes)

-Scissors

-Craft Glue (Elmer’s or any liquid glue)

-Masking Tape

-Yarn, twine, or a thick string

-Paper, pencil, and colored pencils or markers

YouTube Tutorial Coming Soon!

Directions

1. Choose a design for the pinata. For our example we will be using a simple heart.
2. Lay out the cardboard flat and trace the design, in our example draw a heart onto the cardboard box, do this twice. Once that is completed, freehand or use a ruler, to draw out a 2″ (5 cm) long rectangle strip. This strip will be used to give our heart pinata its height, we will use it to wrap around the bases. Depending on the size of the heart we will need a longer or shorter strip.
3. Once you have the three shapes traced (two hearts and a rectangular strip), cut them out.
4. Connect your glue gun and once it is warmed up, add a glue stick.
5. Lay out your three shapes, with one heart shape as the base.
6. Grab the strip with your hands and roll it up. This will help it curve around our base and adhere better.
7. Unroll the strip and curve it onto the base of your heart, roughly measuring how long of a strip you will need.
8. Afterwards, using your glue gun, make a line of glue at the edge of the heart, as if you’re tracing the heart with the glue gun. Acting quickly, grab the strip of cardboard and stick it onto the hot glue, curving it along the heart as you go.
9. Add more hot glue if necessary and let it dry. Once the strip has been glued to the heart base, using a pencil or sharp pointed object, poke two holes at the top of your pinata. This is where the string will go.
10. Grab a small piece of string ~4″ (10 cm) and thread both ends into the holes. Tie a knot on the inside of the pinata and pull the loop at the top, ensuring it is tightly secured.
11. Using an X-Acto knife or scissors cut a small 1″-2″ (2.5 cm – 5 cm) at the top of your pinata, on the strip, this will be our hole where we will put our candy in!
12. Next, you will grab the hot glue gun and use it to “trace” the top of the heart base. While the glue is still hot, lay the other heart cutout on top of it, pressing firmly so the glue adheres to the heart cutout.
13. Next, grab the streamers, roll it up around 3-4 fingers, carefully take the streamers off your fingers without unrolling them then cut it into it from the bottom, leaving about .25″(.635 cm) at the top so when you unroll it gives you a flared out bottom design.
14. Use some of the non-cut streamers, to create a base layer on your pinata, glue at least one layer onto your pinata box.
15. After you have put down your first streamer layer, unroll your cut streamers and start gluing them onto your pinata starting at the bottom and working your way to the top. Don’t worry about any streamers hanging off the shape, these can be cut at the end to make the pinata look better.
16. Once you finish layering your pinata with the cut streamer strips, cut off any excess strip pieces, to give your pinata a more finished look.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have finished your first pinata. This is the moment where you pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

This is also the moment where you stuff your pinata with all the candy you want!

Optional: If you want you can add little designs to your heart by cutting out shapes or letters using your patterned paper.