#January Joy: Flamingo piñata

 Here we are again, for a second installment of the 'make-something-with-your-hands-#JanuaryJoy-challenge' I bring you this flamingo piñata that we made -you guessed it- for Y's birthday party!

We roughly based ourselves on this tutorial from Studio DIY . The first step of course was stealing a couple of big-enough boxes from the cardboard containers. (You should have seen me climbing on the container and almost slipping off it while the boy watched from the car). Next I free-handed the flamingo body on the cardboard and cut it. We used 9 cm. wide cardboard stripes for the sides, and two long pieces for the legs. Using brown adhesive tape (the kind that you use for packaging) we taped the flamingo body to its sides and finally, also the legs. Next, we covered the whole thing in salmon-coloured fringe strips made of crepe paper (save some black and white crepe paper for the face). I would have preferred to use silk paper, but I wasn't able to find it. We used simple white glue to stick the crepe paper strips to the piñata, eventhough the traditional way of making it would have required to make the structure stronger by sticking layers and layers of squares of newspaper with homemade wheat-paste (engrudo), letting the layers dry in between. Basically, papier-mâché. But with the Dutch winter such a thing would never have been ready on time.

Finally I used some transparent paper (a napkin again) to copy the form of the flamingo-face and then used it as a template to paint it using watercolors and a black marker. I cut the face on both sides, stuck it in place (with glue again) and voilà, all set. Except not.

The interesting part came one day before the party when we started filling our lovely piñata with candy. We had simply attached some strong string to the top so that we would be able to hang it. As soon as the weight of the candy pulled down, we knew it was going to let-go, cue the drama. Luckily the husband came to the rescue and saved the day by inserting some metal-wire (a twisted cloth-hanger) through the neck and head of the flamingo to give it some support.