This post is sponsored by Elmer’s Products. All thoughts, feelings, ideas and glee about hot glue and cordless glue guns are my own.

When whipping up party decor, I really honestly try to do things as inexpensively as I can and in large pops of color. Getting big props that fill a lot of eye space and getting them on a shoe string is usually hard, unless you’re using the party staple, the tissue pouf. They don’t have to just be dangly balls hanging from the ceiling, you can transform them for party decor to match your theme, like maybe a tissue paper pineapple pouf like in our Left Shark Pool party, or a pool party flamingo.

If you’re throwing a luau or beach party, or aiming for the very trendy pineapple parties or flamingo parties that are making their way around the internet, you’ll really want to take a look at this tutorial to add to your decor arsenal.

These are both crazy easy to make with nothing but paper and a little Elmer’s Less Mess Hot Glue, and I bet once you start transforming your poufs you’ll get lots of other super creative ideas!

How to Make a Tissue Paper Pineapple Pouf

Confession time: I know how to make tissue poufs by hand, but the fact is, they’re so inexpensive to buy from the store now, I don’t bother making them. Bonus to buying the poufs pre-folded: it’s a big time saver! For the green paper, I recommend finding something a tad thinner than cardstock.

DIY Tissue Paper Pineapple Materials:

• Pre-folded yellow tissue pouf (buy them here)
• 2 sheets 12×12 inch green paper
• Elmer’s Craft Bond Dual Temp cordless glue gun (buy it here)
• Elmer’s Less Mess All-Temp Glue Sticks (buy it here)

Step 1: Fluff your pouf.

Step 2: Draw and cut out your pineapple leaves–you’ll need 4 per tissue pouf pineapple. Free-form cut these, as you don’t want them too uniform! I made mine a little slimmer at the top than the bottom.

Step 3: Shape up your leaves. I put a slight bend in my leaves to make them stand up straight in them.

Step 4: Hot glue! We’re going to glue together the bottoms of the leaves. Put a bead of hot glue about 2 inches long in the bottom fold of each leaf and pinch together.

To make the whole leafy crown that sticks out the top of the tissue pouf pineapple, glue the edges of the four leaves together.

As a side note, this was the first time I had ever used an Elmer’s Craft bond dual temp cordless glue gun. I think I’m going to be an addict. Totally freeing to not have to cramp around with the cord or find an extension cord to reach where I was working! Double bonus was the super nice stand that it rests on and charges from when the glue gun wasn’t being used. If you find one at your local craft store, it’s totally worth picking up! Or, through the miracle of the internet, you can check it out here to read more about it!

***UPDATE*** I’ve had this glue gun for several years now. it’s still the BEST EVER and one of the things I’d probably save from my house if it caught on fire. If you’re a crafter and want to treat yourself a little bit, BUY IT! You won’t regret it.

To crown your pineapple, put a little hot glue on either side of the green leaves and nestle into the folds of the tissue pouf.

I’ve put these in oversized beverage glasses with a little bit of paper shred as centerpieces, and I’ve also used them all on their own to decorate a beach party. Lots of ways to use them!

Tissue poufs are easy to make into pineapples, and just as easy to make into flamingos.

How to Make a DIY Tissue Paper Flamingo

When I was playing around with making the DIY  tissue paper flamingos, I really liked the idea of being able to hang them on the wall as flamingo party decor, so I only used the pouf opened to one side for the first one. Further experimentation was needed, so I made a DIY paper flamingo with a full round tissue pouf. To make it stand, the paper flamingo was placed on a dowel rod mounted in a base, kind of like a paper towel holder.

I loved the glittery flamingo head I made using glitter paper, but if you’re in a pinch, plain pink paper will also work. This time, you do need card stock so it will have the structure to stand up by itself.

Materials:

• Pre-folded pink tissue pouf (buy it here)
• 1 sheets 12×12 inch pink glitter cardstock
• Black glitter paper
• Elmer’s Craft Bond Dual Temp cordless glue gun (buy it here)
• Elmer’s Less Mess All-Temp Glue Sticks (buy it here)

Step 1. Fluff your pouf!

Step 2: Draw and cut out your flamingo head and legs. I free form drew a flamingo, and traced the beak for the black accent. You can use a 1/2 inch punch for the eye, or just cut a circle. The legs are 1/4 inch slices of black glitter paper.

Step 4: Hot glue! Get out your Elmer’s Craft Bond Dual Temp cordless glue gun and glue the black accents on the pink glitter paper. I’ve tried tons of different adhesives on glitter paper, and nothing works quite as well as hot glue.

Once your accents are in place, nestle the bottom of the flamingo head into the folds of the pink pouf (as near to the center as you can get) and use the hot glue gun to glue it in place.

Glue the legs so they hang from the bottom of the tissue pouf. You can bend one of the legs and glue the bend in place for a little more interesting look on your flamingo.

Go crazy with these DIY tissue pineapple and DIY tissue flamingo tutorials–I’d love to see what you come up with!