Both of these crepe papers are STREAMER by Cindus, purchased at Party Pig.  The small roll is 81 feet long, and the large roll is 500 feet long, but compare the diameters of the two rolls and you can see how much more tightly wound the longer roll is.  (These were shot side-by-side, so they are on the same scale.)  The small roll is perfect for piñata making -- it is highly textured and holds its shape well when fluffed.  The large roll is terrible for piñatas.  It is tightly wound onto the roll, and has almost no texturing at all.  I buy large rolls for decorating the party area, but I don't use them on piñatas because the fluffed fringes sag downward.  There is a visible difference in the final piñata when you use crepe paper from a large roll versus that from a small roll. You can use the bad rolls if you're doing the floral technique that I used on the Barbie Heart and Porcupine Pufferfish piñatas.  It doesn't matter as much for those because the neighboring cylinders will help the paper hold its shape.

the cut fringes can be fluffed up, but they have almost no texture and will immediately start to sag back down.  They'll never hold their fluffed out shape as well as the orange paper in that photo will. But these two crepe papers are both Streamer by Cindus. I have seen large rolls by many different companies, but I have never seen one that was as good as a small roll.

The big rolls are always bad! Scroll up to the first picture of the orange and green crepe paper comparison.  The orange is Streamer by Cindus, my favorite paper.  See how roughly textured the paper is, compared to that flat, wrinkly green stuff.  When the orange is fluffed up, the fluffs will hold their shape.  The cut crepe paper fringes will stick out 90 degrees from the piñata and will stay there, because the texturing gives the paper sufficient strength to hold its shape.  If a piñata is made using the green stuff,

Any of the crepe papers shown in the photo to the left will work perfectly fine for decorating piñatas.  The cheapest of them all is Hobby Lobby (the green roll in the lower right), at 33 cents per roll (these are all 2007 prices).  Wal-Mart costs 48 cents a roll for its very limited selection, and party stores like Party City and Party Pig are usually about 79 cents a roll.  My favorite crepe paper for piñata making is the Streamer brand by Cindus (the orange one in the center with the black logo).  The big pink roll in the above photo is also this brand. I used to buy these at Party Pig, but it looks like Party Pig is not carrying that brand any more, and instead carries the Crepe Streamer brand with the blue package (the topmost yellow roll in this photo). The new paper works perfectly well, but the old paper fluffed up better.

1)  Look for lots of rough, uneven bumps in the surface of the paper, not just thin wrinkles running crosswise. The orange crepe paper in this photo has a rougher texture is better than the green for piñata-making.

2)   When you look at the roll from the side, the more highly textured crepe paper is rolled more loosely. This means it has more space between layers in the roll, and therefore has a larger diameter than rolls of other crepe papers with same length.

One final warning about crepe papers is that different companies manufacture different shades of the same color, so if you're covering a large area with one color, make sure you use the same brand of paper throughout. Even common colors like red, black, and white will be noticably different when they're on the piñata side by side. For example, some black crepe papers are a really dark black, while others are grayer in comparison, and some white crepe papers are a bright, clean white, while others are more bone colored.

All crepe paper is not created equal.  Most of it will work just fine for decorating a piñata, so don't worry if you've already got some you want to use, but if you're going to get new crepe paper for a piñata project, this page will help steer you toward the good stuff.  One warning -- the big rolls are always bad! (details below)

The difference between good crepe paper and bad crepe paper is how thick the crepe paper is and much texture it has.  The thicker the better and the more texture, the better.  (I've never actually measured differences in thickness of crepe papers; I think they may all be the same thickness, but increased texturing makes some crepe papers feel thicker than others.) Really smooth crepe paper tends to fall back down after it has been fluffed up, and results in a "flatter" looking piñata.  You can identify textured crepe paper in a couple of ways: