Death Star Piñata – Star Wars Birthday Party

Because what's a party without a pinata, aimirite? And a Star Wars birthday party needs a Death Star Pinata.

This is the fourth (and final) post in the ones about Max's Star Wars 5th birthday party!

You can read the first three here: Party Overview | Themed Food | Costumes

How to Make a Death Star PInata

I hadn't done paper mache since junior high or so, but I wasn't going to let that stop me! I just used the old flour and water and stolen-from-parents-newspaper method, and it worked out great!

We started with a beach ball and did 6-8 layers of paper over it, letting each layer dry in between. (I actually tried doing one using one of those punch ball balloon things, but it popped and was very sad when it did. Also, it wasn't really round.)

So I was in charge of the mache-ing department, but Jamie totally took over the decorating part.

I alternated where I started each layer as well, because it gets really thick where all those ends pile up, so I'd do a layer, let it dry, randomly rotate it and start another layer… it isn't all that scientific of a thing, but I did want to pay attention to my overall roundness.

Because I made this over the course of several weeks, I'd store my flour and water mixture in the fridge. Protip: If you do the same, dump off the water that separates to the top, and replace with nice warm tap water. Takes off the shock of fridge-cold water!

Once I had my nice paper mache ball, we had to set about turning it into the Death Star!

Step one is the indented part. Jamie used a hole saw to cut that out for me. This is also the step where you deflate and remove the beach ball, leaving the hollow paper mache ball. (You'll notice it goes around the spigot for inflating the beach ball:

Now, this is a kinda weird part.

It's time to situate the hanging hardware and then fill it!

Drill a hole in the top of the sphere, keeping mind where the indented part should be. Then we used paracord and a few circles of scrap wood to create a thing to hold it up. 2 circles of the wood with holes in the middle, then a stick to hold the paracord that ran through the holes, then out and out the top. I'm totally not explaining it well, but I hope you get it! Basically, you want a larger surface area to distribute the weight, instead of a single spot. Nothing worse than a pinata falling down before anyone gets to take a whack at it!

Once it's filled, use a couple more layers of paper mache to seal up the hole!

This is where I handed the project off to Jamie… he had a vision for the Death Star piñata, and I'd only get in the way. 🙂

A couple of coats of primer happens to be just the right color grey…

Then he used a brush and black paint to start adding the details…Prepped for the final coat of darker grey spray paint:

And then we're done! We had a Death Star piñata.

But wait! There's more! (I feel like the infomercial guy)

I don't call him “My Ridiculous Husband” for no reason. Jamie had 2 concerns; how would we HIT this awesome piñata we'd made, and how would we blindfold the kids while they took their swings, and still stay in theme. (Because of COURSE this is a concern!)

His solutions? A lightsaber and a blasting helmet shield, of course!

“Oh, sure!” I think, “We can spray paint a broomstick for the lightsaber! That'll be cute!”

He looks at me like I've spouted a second nose. Shakes his head and goes into the garage.

And about 20 minutes later, comes back in with this:

Because of course, he did. Yes, he turned a lightsaber handle on the lathe.

So, he did end up using a broomstick that was spray painted, but he added this little bonus as well. (It has since been cut down so Max can use it to practice his baseball swing; multitasking!)

And the last little detail, the blindfold for the piñata hitting Jedis. Well, how was Luke Skywalker trained? With a blasting shield that covered his eyes of course! “Find me a cheap helmet!” Jamie said! And so I did. Thanks, Amazon, you have everything!

And I came home from work one day to find this: