Decorating the Piñata

Mary Gallagher-Stout: Hi I am Mary Gallagher-Stout and today we are making a traditional star shaped Piata. Right now we are going to decorate this Piata. A lot of times people use paint to paint their Piatas with, but I like to use tissue paper because you get really cool transparency through the newspapers and I think that's more interesting looking. But you certainly could paint them at this stage if you like but I am going to use tissue paper.

So what I do is, I get pretty piece of tissue paper. And the trick is when you are applying the tissue paper on to your decoration, you just want to lay it on top of the glue and then lay it flat. Otherwise it starts to soak up all of the glue and then you have a wet stick ball, and you don't want that. So you just going to lay it on top, get it wet and then you are going to just put it right on to the paper mache.

And just like you did the paper mache before we are going to let it dry. And you can build up different layers and depth of color. If you like it darker like if you don't like to see the lettering through. I think that as interesting bring depth to the piece but it's again, it's all up to what you like.

We are going to continue this method putting the tissue paper draping it on to our shape all over the piece. I am going to let it dry and then for the final touch we are going to add streamers on to the edges. The reason that we are waiting for it to dry is glue does not stick to a wet surface. So we need to let it dry and then come back when it's dry and attach the streamers to the edges.

Now that we have decorated decorated our entire structure with tissue paper, we are going to put on the finishing touches to make it look like a polished fabulous Piata and we are going to be adding streamers. So I am going to show you how to attach the streamers onto the point.

We are just going to grab a little hodge podge sticky decoupage glue and paint it right on the edge and right around the edge of the star. You want a really tacky glue. So if you do not have hodge podge glue that's okay. You just want to go ahead and get I believe just a tacky glue is what you need. And I believe at any local craft store you can go ahead and find tacky glue.

And now we are going to let that dry. Woo wow, I like, I like my streamers. Oh! And the other thing I did not even mention about it about the streamers, I cut then into third so they blow around a lot. When you but a stream and they are about one inch thick. So if you want them to have more airiness about them and more frilliness, you are going to want to cut them into thinner streams. So that's what I have done. You don't have to do that. And you can put as many or as little as you like. I put one on either side and I cut them into three. So that's what you are seeing. And then the top of the balloon is where we are going to be filling it with candy. That's why we still have left this hole because we need to fill our Piata.

So we are going to pop the balloon. We are going to poke two or three holes into the top. Fill it with candy. Be sure to for each handful of candy you put in your Piata, put it in it equal amount of crepe paper or confetti because you are going to need it to disperse the way of the candy. So when you break it all doesn't sit in one spot. And then we are going to run a filament or ribbon or whatever you want to use to hang your Piata with. And install it wherever you want to have your party and then it's time to get to crack in this Piata. And that is how you make you very own traditional homemade Piata. Enjoy.