Birthday Bee Hive Piñata - Coming Up Rainbows

This balloon popped…so we moved onto this one.

Simon turned 7 at the beginning of September. We decided we’d make him a birthday piñata and this is how it all began. I’m going to mention right off the bat this piñata business is no quick project, it is a labor of love. My kids were interested for the first application of glue-covered newspaper strips and then the novelty died off. The project adorned our dining room table for at least a week. Maybe two. Don’t get me wrong I loved the finished project, as did Simon, but I don’t believe we are committed to creating one for each of our future birthday parties.

This was the mixture of glue and water – we did near 1/2 and 1/2 and just kept refilling as we ran out.

This is pre-boredom with helping me. They were stoked to get all gluey and sticky. Cleanup was easy with just a wet washcloth.

After the days of applications were complete we popped the balloon inside. We left a smallish opening on the more narrow end of the balloon to insert the goodies.

I covered the entire thing with black crepe paper so we would have an even colored palate beneath the final layer. I ended up using a roll of white crepe paper to cover the outside (hoping to make it look a bit more hive-ish). It seemed to work for the most part but also wasn’t a quick task. I just used bits of glue stick along the edge of the 3 inch pieces I cut. I didn’t make them much bigger than this as I was working with a round object, if you make them bigger they just bubble and it is pretty impossible to go around and around and keep things looking uniform and even…as you may notice from the black crepe paper I applied first.

I used at least 3 glue sticks, and each piece of white crepe paper got its own private application.

Simon worked hard on making some puff-ball pipe cleaner bees to adorn the sides of the hive as soon as it was complete. We ended up sticking a big wooden spoon inside, tying twine to it, and flipping it sideways across the hive to hold the piñata up. The boys enjoyed filling the pinata with stickers and goodies. We kind of wanted each item we put in to be honey related (eg. Bit O’ Honey candies etc) turns out those things aren’t quite as accessible as we’d hoped they would be.