Mary Gallagher-Stout: Hi! I am Mary Gallagher-Stout and today we are building a traditional star piata and now we are going to be building the center of our star by using a balloon as our mold. So I am going to get started to show you that process.

We have made our paste. So here our paste here, I put my balloon into a cup and tape it with masking tape because they swirl around and we really needed to be sturdy and stay still so it can be -- we can build on this surface.

So what we are going to do is we are going to take our newspaper strips and we are going to dip it in the glue and you are going to swipe of the excess and the way I build mine I start with an X up on the top of the balloon and because we are building a piata, we are going to build all the way down to the very end of your balloon because you're going to fill this part, this is the part that's going to be filled with all the delicious candy and treats that the children and party goers are very much expecting to be a part of.

So what you are going to do is you are going to be building one single layer all the way down to the end of the balloon. Then you are going to let it dry, you are going to put it outside in the sunshine, where it will dry quickly. Usually it takes about an hour outside in the sunshine, but if you are in an air conditioned house it could take longer and you'll know it's dry because it will be very white. The color of the newspaper changes when it dries, it goes back to being very white and you will see spots of flour and it will be nice and stiff and then once it's good and stiff, you are going to do the whole process again, you are going to do that three times and that will be the center for your piata and that will be the structure on to which we put our points onto.

So the balloon, you don't need a release agent because the glue does not stick to the balloon. Once you popped it, the plastic will popped off it whereas other surfaces, it will adhere to and you are going to need to have a release agent to be the surface in between so you can actually remove your sculpture from it.

Okay so now that we are finished putting together that first layer, we need to also be building the points of our star and to build the points we are going to be building those out of a water bottle. As I was saying earlier, if we don't put a release agent onto the bottle then paper-mache will stick and we won't be able to get our sculpture off of the bottle. So what I used is saran wrap.

You are just going to get a normal piece of saran wrap and you are going to cover the bottle. That's what you are going to do. It doesn't have to be stiff or tight but you just need to make sure that you get it done far enough because you really need to start looking at things in your house when you are paper-macheing and building objects because they are really fun shapes all around you, that you can use the paper mache with and a bottle, when I saw this, I thought, oh, there is my star point because I just saw it from here up and I thought well, that looks really cool and that will really work.

So we are going to put the release agent on and now we are going to be able to paper-mache and make our points out of, to go on to our center that we made out of the balloon.

Now what I do I usually go right across the top first and you are only going to build it down halfway because you are just making a triangular shape, you don't need to do the whole bottle. So we are just doing the top and it's the same process where you are going to be paper-macheing, this is the way I do it, swirl it around and if it doesn't stick down completely the first time, don't worry about it because it's going to use two layers.

This is one point of the star depending on how many points you want, will be how many bottles that you will need. We are going to repeat this method two times with the bottle, three times with the balloon. We are going to let them dry completely and then when we are finished, when the pieces are all good and dry and we have made all the layers that we need, I am going to show you how to assemble your star.