Dria's Bday invite: Taco Bar Fiesta

Hey, it's that time of year again and Dria and I are preparing for her birthday party.  This year she picked "Taco Bar" as the theme.  What can I say, it's all about the food.  Anyway, we started thinking fiesta which led to piñatas so that is where we started---mini piñata invites.  We made them to be filled with mini M&Ms and hand delivered them.  I tried to remember to take some pics along the way to share, so here goes......

We found some inspiration for how to make them on these two sites:

http://ohhappyday.com/2011/10/mini-pinatas-diy/

http://campfirechic.com/2012/05/mini-pinata-tutorial-happy-cinco-de.html

I took ideas from each post then adjusted them to work for me.  First, I hand drew a donkey and photocopied it to make four images on one page.  Then, I printed them onto cardstock, stacked another piece of cardstock under it and cut out the images (to ensure exact sets of donkeys).  Here is a pic of the images (sorry it is so light)--you get the idea.

I cut 1 inch strips of paper to form the backbone of the donkey as seen in the second websited I cited.  I tried to use masking tape and  free form it and tape it as I went but that didn't work so easily for me.  Instead, I decided to use scotch tape and tape the paper strip down to wax paper as seen here:

 I then pulled it up off the wax paper and flipped it over exposing the sticky side of the tape.  I placed the two donkeys on each side of the strip as seen here:

I scored the paper strip where there was a crisp point on the donkey (the ears and the pointed feet) and I formed the curve of the donkey as I folded the tape down onto the sides of the donkey.  It got tricky when I needed to get a second strip to finish it off, but you get the point.  After assembling all of them I realized I needed to add a trap door on the bottom so the candy would fall out when the ribbon was pulled so I had to manually cut a door at the bottom and tape in a ribbon hanging out---to pull open the pinata.  I'm sure there would have been a better way to do that had I pre-planned.

I scored the paper strip where there was a crisp point on the donkey (the ears and the pointed feet) and I formed the curve of the donkey as I folded the tape down onto the sides of the donkey.  It got tricky when I needed to get a second strip to finish it off, but you get the point.  After assembling all of them I realized I needed to add a trap door on the bottom so the candy would fall out when the ribbon was pulled so I had to manually cut a door at the bottom and tape in a ribbon hanging out---to pull open the pinata.  I'm sure there would have been a better way to do that had I pre-planned.

I started by gluing tissue paper on the feet, ears and chin (based on the colors of fringe that would be on that body part).  To make the fringe I took strips of 1 3/4 inch tissue paper, folded it lengthwise and fringed the unfolded edge.  It's hard to explain, but I then unfolded the tissue paper and refolded it so that it made it look like a double layer of fringe and glued rows of that to the pinata.  It was easier when Dria and I made an assembly line with her applying glue and me adhering the tissue fringe.

Once we were done with all the fringe we printed and stamped and punched out the 'your invited' labels to be tied around his neck.  We printed out our invites as well and cut, rolled and tied them up so that they would fit inside the pinatas.

And here is the finished pinata invitation.  I will post the details of the party soon!