Black Cat Piñata

Hey ghouls and creeps! Today just so happens to be Halloween! Can you believe it!?! Every year when August comes around, I feel like I’m waiting in anticipation for a few weeks, then I blink and Halloween is here! This year, however, I feel like time passed especially fast. For this week’s project, I wanted to put a new spin on a vintage favorite. I purchased the vintage black cat mask from Spirit Halloween this year, which served as a model for the face details. Make this piñata for your Halloween party or as an alternative for candy distribution to some lucky trick or treaters. Let’s get started!

I rated the Black Cat Piñata project as moderate. This project is overall pretty easy, but could have some tedious cutting tasks required. Skills and techniques covered in this tutorial are piñata assembly, cutting tissue paper into strips then fringing edges, die cutting face pieces, paper gluing tissue paper, and hot gluing face to piñata front.

Step 1: Piñata Assembly: Print the piñata PDF template below and trace it on both sheets of cardboard. Then cut the piñata front and back ideally with a box cutter. If you are unable to find a box cutter, paper shears also work!

Cut your tagboard or card stock into 3” strips. If you are using card stock double layer your pieces by gluing two pieces together, matching edges. After cutting enough strips to equal approximately 65” in length (not including overlap) begin taping strips together at the short ends. Overlap ends about a half inch and tape with masking tape on both sides. Continue joining strips until they are one consecutive piece.

Then wrap your card stock strip around the outside edge of your piñata front or back. Tape the piñata side in place with little masking tape strips.

Then reinforce the bond by running the tape parallel with the edge. Adhere the tape so that it’s half on the side and half on the front/back. Pro-tip: Make little snips in your tape so that it sticks flat to the front/back.

Continue taping the the side to the front/back all the way around the piñata. Once you get to the beginning overlap the ends and tape in place. Now you can put candy in your piñata! Punch two holes about a half inch apart through the side at the piñata’s top. Tie your ribbon into a loop through the holes.

Repeat the steps from above to enclose your piñata interior.

Step 2: Tissue Paper: Then cut your tissue paper into 3” wide strips. Pro-tip: Use a rotary cutter and cutting mat to easily cut the whole stack of tissue paper at the same time!

After cutting your tissue paper strips, fold the strip stack in half lengthwise. Cut fringe on both edges of the folded over tissue paper. Be sure to set aside 3-4 strips of tissue paper without fringe to cover the sides later. Then draw horizontal lines a half-inch apart on the front and back of the piñata.

Use the horizontally drawn lines as a guide to glue each strip of fringed tissue paper across the piñata’s front and back. Continue gluing tissue paper strips until the front and back are covered. Once finished, trim away tissue paper excess along the edges of the piñata. To finish the sides, take your strips without fringe and glue them over top, lining up the edges.

Taking your remaining fringed tissue paper strips glue them along both side edges of your piñata.

Step 3: Piñata Embellishments: Use the JPEG or SVG files below to cut your face details on your Cricut machine, or print the file and use it as a template to trace and cut manually.

SVG file: https://bjdiycutfiles.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cat+pinata.svg

After cutting your pieces, glue the eyes and the mouthparts together before adhering to the piñata.

Lay your face details on your piñata front until satisfied with where the pieces are placed. Then hot glue each piece to attach.

Congrats you’re finished! Hang your new piñata up as fun and festive seasonal decor, or string it up and take a swing at your next Halloween bash!

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Ready for your next project? Here are some tutorials on the blog I think you’ll like! Frame Flip tutorial: https://britnijade.com/frame-flip/, Macrame Wall Hanging: https://britnijade.com/macrame-wall-hanging-w-bones/, or the Spider Web Macrame: https://britnijade.com/spider-web-macrame/. Enjoy!