This page contains affiliate links. When you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. These are items we used for creating décor for this tropical baby shower, and would use again for making event decorations.
For our food and drink tables, I knew I wanted centerpieces that would hold their own next to larger items like cake trays and punch dispensers. These tropical hoop centerpieces took inspiration from other hoop centerpieces I found online, while also giving me a framework for stuffed animals to perch on.
Many thanks to Gabe Romero for the baby shower photos included here.
This inspiration from Miss PlanIt was a major jumping off point for me, and I definitely recommend checking out their tutorial if this is a look you are interested in. This centerpiece used a hula hoop for the hoop section, which I thought would be pretty easy to get ahold of. I soon learned that the main way to get inexpensive hula hoops online was in bulk, so I started investigating other options.
It turns out there is a ton of information online about making your own hula hoops for hooping enthusiasts. I did a lot of research and ended up with a spool of plastic irrigation tubing, which was easy to cut into sections of the length I wanted with a pipe cutter.
The wooden block shown here is a piece of 4”x4” fence post cut to the same length as our floral foam blocks. We drilled holes in each end wide enough to fit the plastic tubing, then secured the ends of the tubing with countersunk screws.
Here you can see the securing screws more clearly. To prevent the dark plastic showing through my burlap ribbon in the next step, I gave these a quick coat of white spray paint.
You can also see the slight crimp in each tube near the block. We pushed down on the hoop once it was screwed into place to minimize vertical stress on the block.
For this next step, I definitely had to do some experimenting with how I wrapped the ribbon. What I found worked best was to use a short section of ribbon to wrap the wooden block, attaching it with a staple gun in areas that would be hidden by the floral foam. I tucked it in at the ends much like wrapping a present. This worked better than trying to move from the larger block to the smaller tubing.
To attach the ribbon to the tubing, we used hot glue at the start and end of the wrapping. We used 3” burlap ribbon without wiring on the edges, and while I would definitely recommend the un-wired style, a width of about 2”-2.5” would probably have given us a smoother finish. Just something to keep in mind if you are going for a more formal look.
To fill out the base of the centerpieces, I used the same assortment of fake leaves as for the embellishments on the backdrop wall. For more details on the types of leaves we chose or how we arranged them, check out our tropical baby shower shopping list. These would be seen primarily from the front, so the largest or most detailed leaves faced that way. The floral foam block was attached to the centerpiece base with wood glue, with weights to hold it in place for a strong bond.
For each centerpiece, I planned to attach a different tropical stuffed animal. To keep visual balance, I wrapped the parts of the hoop that weren’t going to serve as an animal perch with faux vines. I used floral wire to attach heavier sections, and then hid the wire behind leaves and lighter vines. One thing that really helped me here was using miniature clamps to hold the vines in place while I added wire. It really cut down on the juggling factor.
For the stuffed animals, I wanted them to be removable later so they could be part of my nephew’s nursery. I used safety pins, or in the spider monkey’s (affiliate link) case, a swing made of vines, to attach them to the hoops. I’m so pleased with how they came together, and the animals now will have a new home in the nursery.
For the sloth (affiliate link), we used safety pins to attach its feet together so it looked like it was hanging down from the hoop like a tree branch. All of these centerpieces had so much cute character!
We also had this toucan (affiliate link) perched on the hoop. Toucans and other tropical birds were a really significant part of the décor, so I am glad we were able to tie them in with these centerpieces too.
These centerpieces were a lot of fun to figure out, and I’m really happy with the end result! They held their own on the food and drink tables, and we were able to reuse parts of them for future nursery decorations and lots of stuffed animal hugs for my nephew.
The Jeweled Nest 