| Rainbow Zebra Piñata | |||||
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My younger daughter loves zebras, but a black and white piñata wasn't festive enough for a party, so we made a rainbow zebra instead. The zebra took about six weeks from start to finish. It was over four feet tall and took 15 lbs of flour, 16 rolls of crepe paper, and five bottles of Elmer's glue. It took more than 20 hours just to cut and glue the crepe paper. The newspapers that went into it included hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the deaths of Bob Denver and Don Adams. The piñata had three separate candy compartments in the body, and lasted 15 minutes. After finishing this one, I figured I could probably make a second Rainbow Zebra piñata in about two weeks. A couple years later I found out how wrong I was... |
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| The mane was made from cardboard covered in crepe paper. The crepe paper was attached to the mane using double-stick tape, because glue would have shown through. I love the kind of Trojan helmet look of a real zebra's mane, so I exaggerated it here. The vertical lines within each color were done by folding the crepe paper before taping it on; this also gave the mane some additional three-dimensional "ruffle" effect instead of just having the flat sides of the cardboard. | |||||
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The tail tassel was made from black yarn. I couldn't attach one big yarn tassel to the rest of the tail and still have it hang properly, so I made ten or eleven smaller yarn tassels and bunched them all together. Each tassel was individually attached to the papier mache tail, and that way I was able to give the tassel the shape I wanted. In hindsight (pun!) I think I used too many tassels, and the tail is perhaps a bit too robust. Maybe eight or nine tassels would have been better. | ||||
| Click here for a quick picture tour of the making of this Rainbow Zebra piñata. | |||||
| A few years later I made a second Rainbow Zebra piñata, but this time I exaggerated some of the features even more (like the ears, hooves, and that Trojan helmet mane I mentioned earlier). The first zebra looks more lifelike, but the second one has more attitude. | |||||
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