This amazing idea comes from One Charming Party but I like a lot of photos 😉 so I took a couple hundred while I made these with my kids for my son’s birthday … which is Cinco de Mayo.

Here’s how we made mini Piñata’s:

I’m delirious with happiness about these things. Look at how charming! cute! adorable! they are. My heart skips a beat.

You’ll Need:

# Paper cones (sno cone type – we got ours at a restaurant supply store)
# Small candy
# Hot Glue gun and glue (the tape in the photo is a lie.)
# Scissors
# Ribbon
# Crepe paper or streamers

I would definitely break this up in to segments and block together tasks that need to be done before breaking out the hot glue gun.

We made 25 of them so my daughter can take them to school on Thursday (and hey, we love a good excuse around here to craft: also it’s her brothers birthday on Thursday) so if you’re making a large quantity of them let’s start with getting our cones ready to fill.

So you’ll snip the very tip off of 25 cones:

All these paper cones lined up are so soothing … am I just weird? Anyone else experiencing this?

Once that’s done you’ll snip the ribbon about “yay long” (again, 25 of the same cut. Rinse, repeat.)

Tie a knot at one end of every cut ribbon:

Then fold the un-knotted side of your ribbon to fit through the open end of your cone … which will make your “pull string”. This sounds entirely complicated … which it is not.

It might be a good time to plug in your glue gun so it’s ready to use after this next step.

Now to cut the crepe paper streamers! I used the diameter of a cone to measure my “control” piece and then just snipped happily until I had a pile of about 27 streamers to use.

I frayed about 10 of the streamers – I was going to do them all but it’s tedious. You need to fold, individually cut each fray over and over and over again and then do it some more.

But test it out to see what your finished product will look like (you’ll need the motivation through this step …)

Happy days – you’re almost there! Fill one half of your piñata (or one cone) with candy, we went with 3 pieces each (but again – use an assembly line and pre-fill all the cones you’ll need in order to complete your 25 piñata’s).

See?

I put the hot glue on the cone that did not have candy in it and then pieced it together, applied some pressure to ensure a seal and then went on to my next one.

By this time your helpers will have peetered out on you. The hot glue isn’t really kid friendly anyhow … I have 2 blisters and burns to prove it. Yeeooowzers!

Bless their little will power for helping you at all and not being allowed to eat any of the candy.

For the streamers – after all the piñata’s were assembled I just did another pass of the hot glue gun over the seam and rolled the streamer on applying light pressure to seal. No photos of this part since my helpers were so decidedly engrossed in an animal documentary on Crocs.

It’ll be worth it though …

Total project took about an hour from start to finish and I paused to take photos and corral my little’s from time to time. Completely doable.

Also only used 3 glue sticks for the entire project (I have a small gun) and was expecting to have to run out and buy more – so I’m glad I didn’t have to do that mid-project/mess.

Happy Cindo de Mayo! Happy Birthday! Happy day!!!