The making of the Titanic: The piñata that is....

My son: " Mami I want a Titanic party with a Pinata!!"


Me: "mmm they do not have that on the shelf..."

My son: " .. it is OK - You can make it right?"

I think: Who am I to disagree with him?. Sure, I CAN make it!!!



... but I must be crazy... how? when?....
...but you all know me - I LOVE a challenge, so I took it!!! and here it is the Titanic!!!

It all starts with the materials - we have just moved so I had a bunch of cardboard boxes. Normally I collect cereal boxes, toilet paper and kitchen rolls and egg cartons for my pinatas and crafts.

You need to flatten all cardboard boxes and cut them in strips of about 2 inches wide and as long as you can. make as many strips as you can so you have all you need before you start with the main structure.

You will also need a stapler, Elmer's or white glue, newspapers, something I call crepe paper, but not sure of the name in English ( I need to research that but you will know what it is from the photos to come), flour (yes regular white cooking flour) and a lot of time!!!!

I also printed the Titanic plans from the internet (I wanted to make sure I made the pinata as close to the real thing as possible)

To make the structure, you simply take the strips of paper and start stapling them together to the shape you like. I followed the plans above. Here are some pictures to give you the idea of how to staple them together. Make sure you leave holes in between the strips, if you put the strips too close together it will be very difficult to break the pinata!

Once you have your structure, it is time to make the walls. For that you need to make some papier mache. Take lots of newspapers and cut little strips from it of about 1 inch wide and again as long as you can. In a bucket or big bowl, mix water, some white flour and white glue until you have a runny white liquid, very watery. I do not have exact measures (unfortunately I do a lot of things as we say in my country "al ojo" or just by looking at it.

Once you have the liquid ready, put some of the newspaper strips on it so they get wet. Pick up one strip at a time and start placing them on top of the structure, covering the holes. To do the funnels, I used 4 toilet paper rolls at an angle.

You need to cover the whole ship, particularly the bottom so it is strong enough to hold on to the candy and toys, but not too hard so you can break it. You will not be able to do the whole ship in one go. I did one side per night, so the side had 24 hours to dry before starting on the other side.

Once the papier mache is completely dry (leave 2 or 3 days after last side to be sure), you can start putting the colored paper. I bought the rolls of crepe paper in Party City. They sell this massive roles of streamer paper, theone that is sort of wrinkled that you can stretch with your hands. You need to take it out of the roll, and with a pair of scissors you will cut little lines on the sides about 2/3 through - this is a very time consuming activity. I will sit and do a whole roll at a time and roll it again as it will be easier to cover the pinata if it is rolled up.

Take the paper and with white glue, start sticking the rolls gluing only thetop of the strip of paper that does not have the cuttings. Start at the bottom of where a color is supposed to end and work upwards. You will need to glue the next layer of paper slightly on top of the one before so it looks nice. See below:

You need to continue layer after layer with all the colors. Once that is done, let dry again for another day. then you are ready to do the details. I cut some windows and stuff with construction paper and printed the titanic letters on the computer. You can glue all paper details to the ship and voila!!! the Titanic is ready.

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