How to Make a Balloon Hula Hoop & Other Baby Shower Balloons

Making a hula hoop of balloons is much more challenging than I expected, but the results were beautiful! Learning what I did through this first try will make me a lot more prepared and more efficient in next time I need to make one of these things!

So when I was at the unicorn party that was the focus of my last blog (Link in case you haven't read it yet, https://lilasballoons.wixsite.com/lilasballoons/single-post/2018/10/13/Unicorns-have-taken-over-my-house), I met a lady who was putting together her sister's baby shower in just two weeks! So this was a bit of a rush but I was excited about it, so agreed to do it!

When she told me she wanted the balloon hula hoop I was a little intimidated. I know these things take some serious supplies. I knew I would need a hula hoop, spray paint for the hula hoop, approximately 75-100 balloons, a letter balloon for the center, greenery and fishing wire (to hold it up) I guessed this based on this photo I made up on my computer. With my guesstimates, I gave her a price, which she accepted and we were full steam ahead!

For ordering balloons I ordered 100 12" white balloons, 25 12" gold balloons, and 25 12" ivory pearl balloons, along with the M for the center and some large stroller cradles for the columns (I'll talk about the columns after). Then for the hula hoop I went to Canadian Tire. Keep in mind, it's October. Summer is dying and hula hoops are harder to come by than I thought. I had to talk to two people in Canadian Tire before one of them got me hula hoops from the back. Of course the hula hoop wasn't white (as expected) so I picked up some spray paint to,

Spray painting this thing I learned one coat is not enough, so painting and drying took a few days (so if you make one, be mindful of that). After that I was onto greenery!

I went to my local dollar stores and they didn't have the long thick greenery I was imagining (I know it looks kind of sparse in the photo but the dollar store ones weren't even that thick. Knowing Michael's would be more expensive, I went there anyways. Low and behold they had these beautiful 6 foot strands! Look at the price tag and they're $29.99 EACH! But then I noticed a 70% off sign on the rack (as they count as "fall decor" and they were making room for winter), making them just $9 each. I can live with $9! So I grabbed two of the ones in the photo and 1 more ivory coloured one to go with the hoop.

Then build day came! I was so excited! I had all my stuff ready to go! Huffed, and puffed, and blew up my M for the center, and it looks like this. Obviously, that's not acceptable. I asked the client if paper would be okay since clearly this was not, and she REALLY wanted a balloon M for the center. So to recap where we are, its noon on Friday. She's picking up tomorrow morning at 9:30AM. I can't order anything in that fast so I have to find it in town like NOW. First option was go to my friends at The Paper Unicorn and see if they had a little M (I had to go there anyways for helium from the stroller columns). They didn't have any (just my luck), but they said to try The Dollar Store With More in Sahali, drive up there and thank goodness they had an 18" M! Now run back home to get to work!

From here things went a little more smoothly. I had just purchased my first electric balloon pump. It works really well! Too well, It blew up my balloons way faster than I could handle (balloon hula hoop balloons are 5" and under, my pump blows a 5" up beyond capacity in under a second) so, more huffing and puffing. Then I learned the hard way ALWAYS BUY QUALATEX BALLOONS! The white ones were not Qualatex, There were some that the necks would shred when you tied them up, some didn't inflate evenly (like you blew and it inflated to about 4 inches, then you had to REALLY blow to get any bigger for some, and then others were fine). The extra few dollars is worth it to have dependable balloons. All in all the hula hoop alone used about 120 balloons (which is why you always buy more than what you need!). Then the ivory strand of greenery didn't look like enough so I put the extra stand from the columns in with it. I tied everything in place with my fishing wire, then I was done. This is what it looked like in the end and I think its beautiful! (And the M fits much better now)

Lessons Learned

1.) Balloon hula hoops take 120 balloons to fill HALF of it, so a whole ring would be closer to 250 balloons

2.) Letters for inside hula hoops need to be 18"

3.) Buy greenery near the end of seasons to get better deals. Mine used a total of 16 feet of greenery to achieve this look.

4.) Give yourself a few days for spray painting

5.) IF it goes smoothly, this takes about 3 hours to make. Not so smoothly.... A lot longer...

Now just briefly about the columns. I've made columns with sculpting wire before, not too out of the ordinary. But the greenery turned out quite heavy on it. then with the balloons on top and the stroller being filled with air, it would stay up. So I had to get the strollers filled with helium. It was not cheap as they were VERY large and the price of helium just went up. But, the helium held them upright which made it worth while. I made two of the columns making my supply list of: 1 coil of sculpting wire (cut in half), 1 6 foot strand of greenery (cut in half), 2 helium filled stroller balloons, and 32 white 12" balloons, oh and a water balloon in the base of each as a weight.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the making of a hula hoop of balloons and greenery columns!