Mini Pinatas

Hi Cricut Fanatics!  I hope this Saturday finds you all well.  This is Rita with Rita's Paper Obsession.  I apologize for the late post, I went on a long weekend trip to visit family and came home with a stomach bug. 

My post for today is a party favor I made for our office celebration of our clerical staff on Administrative Professionals Day.  We decided to serve breakfast burritos and give a gift card to a local restaurant for the seven support staff in our office.  A fiesta theme seemed to suit best and I wanted a gift card holder that was unique to the theme.  You can't have a fiesta without a pinata with the goodies in it, right?  A little pushed for time, I had searched the Internet to buy something but didn't like anything I came across.  I finally found a blog that had a DIY version of exactly what I was looking for so I decided to make them instead.

I chose the donkey pinata from Birthday Bash and cut two at 7 inches from a 7 1/2 square piece of poster board.  I didn't worry about flipping the image as it was going to get covered by tissue paper.  I then cut four 1 1/2 x 7 1/2 inch strips.

The image was a little wider than the piece of poster board but that wasn't a problem as I cut off the tail and the front ear and mane between the ears.

I ran each strip of poster board along a pen a couple of times to make it a little more pliable.

I wanted a little trap door in the bottom to put the goodies in so I scored about 2 inches from the end of the first strip and started taping it to one side of the donkey with masking tape.  Joining the other strips to make it all the way around the cut, trimming off the excess. 

Next step was to adhere the opposite donkey side.

As I had seven of these to make, I learned that it was easier and faster to put a strip of masking tape on the poster board strip, then cut little slits along the edge that would be taped to the donkey.  Sorry, I didn't take pictures of that process.  I used four strips instead of one long one as I thought it would be easier to work with.  I'm not quite sure about that as I had to tape the ends together.  The process of taping the donkey together at first took me about an hour but as I perfected my technique I could tape one together in about half that time.

At this point I filled the shape with the gift card and chocolate candies through the little trap door on the bottom and taped that shut.

From a muli-colored pack of tissue paper, I cut off 1 inch sections.  At home I used my scissors but it was a lot easier using the heavy duty guillotine paper cutter at work.

For the fringe I cut slits along the tissue strip about half way.

Next was the fun part of decorating.  I decorated one as a sample and then enlisted some coworkers to help with this process.

At first everyone was a little worried about doing it right. They aren't a crafty bunch and I was making them use glue! 

But once they got into it they created some really fun colorful pinatas.

Eyes were cut from cardstock using a 3/4 inch paper punch for the white and my two-hole desk punch for the black.   Some added tails from 1/2 inch strips of tissue paper and other clever accessories.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the completed pinatas as I wanted to take them on the tables on Administrative Professionals Day.  My mistake as I missed the whole thing.  I was told they were a huge hit with the staff.

Designed by: Rita Poteat
Cricut Cartridges Used: Birthday Bash
Cricut Machines Used: Cricut Expression
Project type: Party favor
Project theme: Fiesta
Supplies Used: Poster board, masking tape, tissue paper, glue, scrap of white and black cardstock, 3/4" circle punch, regular size hole punch and a fun group of co-workers.