A couple of weeks ago, I shared with you a design for Super Mario Brothers birthday party invitations.  At this party, the hostess had a couple of entertainment options for the kids that I thought were so great I had to share with you all.  The two I found the most unique were individual pinatas and making character clings out of puffy paint.

Individual One-Up Box Pinatas

To make these nifty pinatas, which are opened with a string and not by whacking on them with a bat, you will start with an empty soda container.  The long, skinny kind that is made for easy refrigerator dispensing, not the older style.  Measure how wide your soda container is (mine was about 4.75 inches).  You will want to measure up the same distance (4.75 inches) from the still-closed bottom and make a line.  Use an X-Acto knife or a pair of scissors to cut all around the box along the line. 

When you are finished, you should have a cube with an open top and a closed bottom.

Next, we will work on the bottom.  Go ahead and carefully open up the bottom of your soda carton cube, make sure you don’t rip any of the flaps.  Then use yellow duct tape to cover the outside of all of the flaps.  Just cut strips of the tape that are slightly larger than the flap and wrap it around the back like you would a gift.  Cover all of the bottom flaps in this manner.

Next, we will need to attach a string for the child to pull on to open the box.  Simply take some curling ribbon and tape it to the underside of the flap that will be on the top once the box is closed.  Then close all of your flaps and attach a small piece of the duct tape to hold the box closed.  Trust me, when the kid pulls on the string, that piece of tape will release and it will open!

Now that the string mechanism is all rigged up, lets work on the top of the box.  Again, we will use the yellow duct tape to make a cross on the top in order so you have something to use to hang the pinata from the ceiling.  Once you have your cross, poke two holes in the resulting, overlapping square in the middle.  Thread a pipe cleaner through the holes and twist the ends together to make a hanging loop.

That finished the top so that only leaves us with the sides.  There are a few ways you can do this.  You can design and print yellow boxes with white question marks on your computer and print them and cut them out, or you can do as I did and cut yellow card stock to fit on each side and then glue on white question marks.  Be sure and measure each side before cutting your paper to fit because I noticed that the box isn’t a perfect cube, so some of my pieces were off.  To make the question mark, I used my Cricut machine.  You can do these on the computer or print out our template from the invitations that also had question marks.

I suspended this sample cube from the door frame in order to photograph it for you, but for the party you’ll want to hang them from the ceiling, like my friend did.  They looked fantastic in a large group and the kids loved picking out one to open.  I can see this pinata idea being easily adapted for other parties, too.  Just change the outside decoration with different papers and the color of your duct tape and you are good to go!

Mushroom and Star Clings

This is one of those projects where I couldn’t believe it worked.  I saw it work at the party and I saw it work again at home when I recreated it but I still can’t believe how easy and fun it is.  First, find some simple pictures that match the theme of your party and print them out onto 8.5 x 11 paper. Slide each sheet into a sheet protector.  Before the party, use black puffy paint to outline the image on top of the sheet protector.  Do this at least a day ahead of time so it has plenty of time to dry.  At the party, give each guest one of the pre-outlined sheet protectors with an image inside.  Have the kids fill in the image with different colors of puffy paint.  In the example I did, I used green and white for the mushroom and silver glitter for the star.  Just make sure you cover the whole image, including over top of the black lines.  Do this at the very beginning of the party so that the paint will have time to dry before the kids have to go home.

After the paint thoroughly dries, peel the image off of the sheet protector.  Yep, that’s right, just peel it off and flip it over and see just how darn cute they are!  My daughter still plays with the ones she made at the party over a month ago.  They are currently sticking to our refrigerator door but have been found on the glass on our home’s front door as well.  This project would be great to do for the upcoming Christmas season with images of Santa or some reindeer!