Porñata

Back in the olden days, when I was living in France for college the first time, I had a fellow ex-pat friend named Kim. We had sort of a rough go of things for the first few months, so when a Kindly Old Man offered Kim a free newspaper on the metro on the way to my place she thought perhaps our luck had changed. She had just been wanting a newspaper, and lo, the people of Paris had delivered.

Then she opened it, only to find that the formerly-Kindly Old Man had stuck porn photos all through it. The "glue" was still wet. Afraid to be seen throwing it in the garbage, Kim carried it all the way to my house, where we vacillated between laughing and screaming about the ick-factor. Why am I telling this story now? Because I think that Old Man would be proud of the state of my pinata.

I chased around town for a while after volunteering this morning looking for discarded newspapers, with no luck. So I wound up springing for a Seattle Times Sunday edition. Hopefully I can make my money back in coupons.



I don't remember papier-mache featuring prominently in my childhood. I only remember two projects I ever made with it, a pumpkin my mother still uses as decoration around Halloween, and a sort of volcanoeque thing. I thought I remembered them being made with fabric softener, but the internet has informed me that I need starch.

Once starch was achieved (they still sell it in the supermarket, who knew!?), I followed the instructions on the bottle and whisked it 2:1 with flour. I dunno what the flour is going to do, but hopefully it won't attract the dreaded pinata ants.



After cutting the Sunday times into strips without even reading it (take that, non-online news!) I started dipping and stripping.



It took me a while to get down the first coat, and it was messy enough to make me understand why my mother never encouraged a career in chewed paper. I am hoping that the tagboard absorbs enough starch to sort of meld with the newspaper and they can shore each other up. I think I will have to do at least three layers to hold what i consider an acceptable amount of candy.



Currently the first coat is drying per the instructions on the starch. I feel like this may take a long time. Perhaps I overstarched. Fortunately we are having record breaking heat.

She isn't pretty. Right now my pinata looks like a refugee from bad bukkake. If there is one thing I've learned in the past few years though, its that paint can hide a multitude of sins. Don't you worry, my dear Porñata Starlet... we can fix it in post.