Fringey

My Little Helper and I made a lot of progress on the dragon pinata for his birthday. The site I used as a starting point for the pinata suggested priming over the paper mache so that not as much paint would be needed to cover up the newsprint.  I'm not sure if I actually needed this step since we would be doing a traditional tissue paper fringe, but I thought it couldn't hurt to do it since I had a tiny bit of spray primer left over from my desk project.  Since it was nearly 100 degrees out the primer dried really quickly.
Then we were able to move on to fringing it, or putting on it's skin according to MLH.  This was the part I was really dreading.  I knew it would be tedious and time consuming.  I bought several packets of the perfect shade of blue tissue paper at CPWM for $1.95 each and I only ended up using not even an entire packet. Awesome! I cut the tissue paper into 2"w strips and then fringed in about 1".  I started at the tip of the tail so my fringe strips would over lap each other
. I put the glue mostly on the pinata itself rather than on top of the previous layer of fringe because I didn't want it to get all gunked up.
Along the spine of the dragon I measured and marked out where the dragon's spikes would go so that I wasn't wasting my fringing and tissue papering efforts.  This is also the area where I anticipate we will make the opening for getting the candy and prizes inside as well as attaching the hanger.
Fringing was tedious, but I got really into it and kept going after bedtime and finished it up today.  I was thrilled that Mr. W was so happy with the way it was turning out.  He thinks it looks awesome too.  MLH is behaving so grateful and appreciative.  He kept coming into the kitchen to check on my work saying, "Wow!" or "Awesome!" or "This is SO cool!"  It certainly makes the effort worth it.  At one point before bed he came back down to give me an extra hug and a kiss and thanked me for his pinata.  What a sweet boy!
Today as I was finishing up with the tissue paper, I sent MLH and Mr. W upstairs to the playroom to paint the wings and spikes.

The wings I made out of a used mailing envelope and the spikes are the inside dividers from and egg carton. MLH was inspired to use an egg carton for the spikes based on a large paper mache dragon at his old preschool.  I love his imagination and memory! Originally MLH very specifically wanted green spikes, blue on the top of the wings and green on the bottom of the wings.  But at some point during the actual painting process he decided that some of the spikes should be blue too.  Not sure how all that will come together. This was the first time that I let him use this paint set that his Grammy W sent as a gift at least two years ago. At the time I was like, "What was she thinking?!" But at nearly 5 years old I think it is a great gift.  The paint pots have a little indentation to hold the paint brush.  Pretty nice!
I had considered filling the head cavity with candy too or opening up the head cavity to make a giant mouth from which the fire would cascade, but in the end decided it would be easier to just tissue paper over the whole thing and cover the last bit up with the metallic grass MLH picked out for the flames and one last piece of fringed tissue.
 As I type this I realize that he needs some sharp teeth too. MLH and I both agreed that our dragon pinata would need googly eyes.
So we're not done yet, but I'm feeling really good about how quickly this part came together. It is a lot of work, Mr. W asked me if I was sure we wanted to have the children bust it open at the party. I think that may be the funnest part, but yeah, each child will probably only get ONE homemade birthday pinata out of  Momma!