My daughter wanted a pinta for her birthday party. There was NO WAY I was going to pay $20+ (plus the cost for items to fill it) for a pinta that will be busted up. That is just not my style. So I hit the internet once again for ideas and came up with the following tutorial on how I made her pinta.
Combine equal parts flour and water. I used my food processors
to get rid of lumps quickly. You can also use a hand whisk
This is what it looks like once I have whirled it for about 30 seconds.
This is my form. It is what I call a ‘punch ball’. I found a pack of 4 at my dollar store for $1. I blew it up most of the way and tied a knot in the end. You can also use a traditional balloon if you can’t find a ‘punch balloon’.
Next cut up newspaper. For this size project I cut a newspaper in thirds and then those strips in thirds again. There is no rhyme or reason or right or wrong.
I found the best method was placing the paper on the surface of the paste and pressing lightly.
Then scrape it along the edge of the bowl to get rid of the excess. You are looking for a light coating of paste.
Place the paper on your balloon.
Smooth the paper out. I found this to be less messy and faster drying time as compared to dipping the entire piece in the paste.
This is the end where I will fill the pinta. Make it big enough so you can put in your biggest item.
This is how I dried the pinta ( this is the newspaper layer… there were 4 newspaper layers… be sure to dry COMPLETELY in between layers.)
The final layer was printer paper. This way if you want to paint it a light color you don’t have to do a base coat to block out the newspaper print.
Once THIS layer is dried (preferably over night) untie the balloon. It is SO COOL to hear the balloon release from the shell.
Because I had the rubber band at one end and the knot of the balloon at the other end I now have an opening at the top ( for filling ) and a small one at the bottom. I threaded a rope from the bottom (small hole) out the top (large hole) and tied a largish knot at the bottom. The extra rope will be used to tie it to her swing set for her party.
We painted it blue with a bright red 5 on it. She will be five, you know. Here is the birthday girl and her Aunt filling the pinta with treats and shredded paper from our paper shredder.
I hope you have learned something and hope you are able to pinch your own pennies by building your own pinta!
2 Responses to “How I Made A Pinta”
July 9th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
yay! my son turns 4 on the 21st and he wants a pinta this year… I SO do NOT want to spend the money on it but was going to if I couldnt’ find anything easy enough to do… so THANK YOU! Hopefully I (with his help of course, he’d never let me do something this cool without him LOL) can get this done pretty easily.
July 14th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Pinatas are great fun… down here they’re a bit cheaper but making them is a great project! We did that growing up and many times they were stronger than the bought ones and took forever to break!