DIY Fabric Pinata Elephant

Covering a birthday pinata with tissue paper is very standard and definitely very pretty but I wanted to do something a bit different this year for E's birthday so I covered the pinatas with fabric instead. Well, it was a much quicker way to to have a fabric elephant which is neither sewn nor stuffed and I could use all the gorgeous printed fabrics I had left over from my old projects. E is still too young to pull a pinata or beat the life out of it without getting hurt and neither would the parents appreciate their two years old stuffing their faces with lollies, so I didn't make a working pinata but just used a few of them as decoration all around the party. They are really simple but a bit time consuming to make, well maybe a bit less time consuming as compared to adding tissue paper fringes.

These looked even better than the pictures trust me as the fabric gives them more brightness and texture than any paper could have and also the fabric drapes well around the shape.

You will need:

• Card board sheets preferably the size you want your pinata to be.
• masking tape or any wide sticky tape
• craft glue
• fabric strips
• upholstery needle and thread or string

I haven't been able to get many pictures for the instructions but they are pretty simple steps to follow.

• Cut out two cardboards in the shape you want your pinata, I wanted to make an elephant.
• Now cut out some strips from your card board of the thickness you want your pinata to be, I used 3 inch wide card board strips.
• Start adding the cardboard strips between the two elephant cut outs and stick them with sticky tape. Some curves and corners might be a bit hard to reach so use smaller strips or pieces of card board to cover those areas. 
• Your pinata should look something like the pictures below.

• Now all you need to do is paste the fabric strips all over your pinata in any pattern you like. I used different prints in horizontal pattern and covered the pinata.
• Some curves like the trunk and in between both the legs didn't really come out very neat but it still looked good all in all.
• Use a long upholstery needle to pass a string or thread through the top of the pinata and it is ready to hang.
• Fill in the lollies before closing the pinata and covering it with fabric if you want a functional one.

You can use any colour fabric plain or printed and make them matching to your colour scheme. Don't they look grand and very crafty with now sewing at all.