My 7 year old really wanted a pinata at his panda party. I loved the idea, especially since I was struggling to come up with activities (pandas pretty much just roll around looking cute and eating bamboo). But when we started looking for a panda pinata, Kian got upset. There was no way he was going to hit a panda with a bat. I totally understood his thought. It seemed a little mean. So I tried to make a pinata that looked like bamboo….Failure. Then the idea came to make a pinata in black and white, but of what? It was my 12 year old who suggested the age Kian was turning. So a black and white number 7 pinata it was, and I couldn’t have been happier with how it turned out.

Supplies Needed:

2 poster boards

clear packing tape

Tissue paper in the colors you want to use

White glue

Jute twine or rope

Candy to fill the pinata

How To:

This actually ended up being easier than I thought. I started by drawing a large number seven on a piece of poster board. It was about 2 feet tall. I cut it out and used it to trace a second one onto the poster board. Then I just cut out 3 inch strips of poster board. Then I used tape to start making the sides of the pinata. I started attaching the sides to just one of the sevens. Then taped the other seven on top. I made sure all the seams were covered by at least one layer of tape and doupled it up on corners.

It was not perfect, but essentially I ended up with a box that looked like a 7. I taped twine along the entire upper part of the seven. It held up really well. We had 8 kids who participated in the pinata activity 2 of them were teens and they all got to have 3 turns. Making the shape took me about an hour. Covering it took a lot longer, but I spent $4 total on supplies (not counting the candy) and there is always an investment somewhere, whether it is money or time.

I cut a flap in the top so that the candy could be inserted. Then the tissue paper fun began.

It is really simple. I left the tissue paper accordion folded the way it had come in the package and cut it into a 1 inch strip. I opened up the strip so that it was just folded over once and then cut small cuts half way up to make the fringe.

This was glued on in layers working from the bottom up with the fringe pointing down.

Just keep repeating this until you have covered the entire pinata. I opted for making the fronts white and the sides black since pandas have big stripes of black. But alternating colors would look fun too.