The Pinata craze looks here to stay and they’re a popular activity at so many parties.  But what if you want to make your own? Well, party bag queen, turned small business champion Joanne Dewberry has created a rather useful DIY guide for lucky number 7.  So here’s how you can save some pennies, do a spot of recycling and unleash your inner craft queen!

When organising a birthday party for your child the most useful thing you can do is have a theme.  Having a theme helps collate all your ideas, colour schemes and activities.  For Megan’s 7th birthday party she requested a “Woodland Themed”, so we held it at our local Country Park.  Utilising the park and walking opportunities meant the children were entertained leaving us with less to organise.  For me that was an epic win in party planning.  We put up a gazebo, which we filled with activities whilst we waited for everyone to arrive including decorating wooden slice necklaces and a pinata, which was Megan’s idea before going on a scavenger hunt, ending the party with snack boxes and cake plus a play in the park.

Megan’s pinata suggestion was super last minute, like a couple of days beforehand!  She’d suggested a pinata would be a great way to entertain her friends whilst we waited for everyone to arrive, she was of course right!  After consulting my craft best friend “Pinterest” I realised there wasn’t anything suitable as I didn’t want to be covered in paper mache stressing out so late in the day.  So quite simply I crossed my fingers and botched something together!  Luckily we’d had a few deliveries and I knew the recycling bin was full of big boxes.

This is probably one of the easiest and most entertaining things I’ve ever made.  I literally cut out a giant 7 which I used this as a template to create a second 7.  Using bits of cardboard I built up sides around the first 7.  You can see I have taped card in the inside to make sections. I did this for 2 reasons :

1. To add a bit of stability to the 7 and stop it being so flimsy.
2. To stop the sweets from sitting at the bottom of the 7 as they’d have all fallen out in the first smashing. This way the children had to break through 3 sections giving everyone a chance to hit the pinata and win a sweetie treat.

When I said I’d bodged it together I wasn’t lying!  There is nothing level or neat about this number 7. I used duck tape on the corners alongside lots and lots of sellotape to connect the sections.  Some of the cardboard wasn’t even the same size it was literally held together by tape, lots and lots of tape.

I filled the three sections with sweets and then sellotaped the second 7 on top, which wasn’t exactly pleasing to the eye.  Lucky for us Daddy Moo is a day before Christmas Eve shopper and ends up buying all the naff Christmas paper rejected by us normal shoppers.  I found some holly and berry wrapping paper in the stash which was perfect for the Woodland theme.  Keeping with making this as simple as possible, I wrapped the cardboard number 7 like a present.

It looked amazing hanging up and the children had a blast knocking it down!