These are the piñatas that started it all.  I was cleaning my garage one day and found a box of shredded paper used as packing material. With Halloween approaching, it occurred to me that the shredded paper would make a perfect outer covering for a ghost piñata.  So I made these two piñatas for a neighborhood Halloween party.  We broke the ghost, and the parents all agreed the kids had enough candy after that, so the bat hung in my attic for the next eight years until our Girl Scout troop broke it as the final activity for earning their Bat patch.

Because these were my first piñatas, I did some things differently from the way I do them now.  First of all, I laid the papier mache strips directly onto

the balloons, instead of first wrapping the balloons in newspaper, which is what I do now.  Laying papier mache strips directly onto the balloons is a bad idea because the balloons are more likely to pop as the papier mache dries, and because when you lay them right onto the balloons, you have to put on more layers to make the piñata hold its shape, and that means your piñata walls become pretty heavily fortified.  I painted these piñatas before decorating them because I wasn't sure how well the shredded paper would cover the ghost, and I didn't want newspaper showing through.  (Yes, the ghost is painted gray -- I didn't have any white paint).  I didn't expect any problems covering the bat, but I painted it anyway.

The Bat!  Decorated using black crepe paper, colored felt, and googly eyes.  I drew lines on the wing membranes using a black marker.