Jungle Fruit Sculpture

This year our Cub Scout Pack did a Jungle themed Blue and Gold.  It really ended up being a lot of fun.  I was so glad that we had some great moms that stepped up and planned virtually the whole event!  Since I wasn't wrapped up in the details of the day, I had some free time to make this jungle fruit sculpture.  Sorry about the quality of these pictures.  I just got a new phone, and for some reason my images from it are always grainy.  I think it is a setting I have to figure out because it is suppose to be a good camera.

I got the idea for this from a picture I found on Pinterest.  The link only lead to an image, so I called my parents and asked if they wanted to help me figure out how to build it.
We attempted to put this together twice.  The first time was a nightmare, but the second time was a huge success.
For the first attempt we tried to use a large cake board and drilled three thin dowel rods down into it.  Our hope was that the pineapples would be stable enough that it wouldn't go anywhere.  This was not at all the case.  The juice from the pineapples ran down and made the cake board flimsy, which in turn made the dowels come loose.  The end result was a huge pile of fruit on the floor.  It wasn't pretty!

Finally hubby and my dad cut a piece of thick plywood for under the cake board and cut a broom handle for the rod.  Hubby drilled wholes down through the pineapples so that we could slide them down over the broom handle.  This worked well and held up nicely.

What you will need:
4 pineapples
3-4 kiwi
2 mangoes or small watermelons (we used mango because watermelon is so hard to find right now)
2 oranges
1 lemon
1 tangerine
red grapes
8 bananas
toothpicks
wood skewers
broom handle
wood block or plywood
assorted fruit for eating
plastic tablecloth

1. Start by preparing your broom handle and board.  You will want to measure the handle against your pineapples to see how long you need it.  Make it just a hair shorter than the pineapples will be stacked up.  Screw it into your base centered, but set back slightly.  Cover your board with tin foil or a plastic table cover.
2. Remove the top and bottom of three pineapples. Save the tops from each of them. On the fourth remove only the bottom from your pineapple.  Drill a hole the same size or slightly smaller than your broom handle all the way through the first three pineapples, but only a little more than half way through the fourth.  You don't want a hole in your tree top!
3. Slide the pineapples down over the broom handle so they resemble a tree trunk.  Then using wood skewers attach the pineapple tops and kiwi around the top of your "tree"  You may need to trim the pineapple away from the leaves so it looks nicer.
4. To make the monkeys, take one lemon and cut it in half.  Trimming the lemon lengthwise would help make it look more like a monkey.  I didn't do this and realized my mistake too late to fix it.  Notch out a nose on the top of your lemon (just two small v's) and then trim a mouth on the underside of the lemon.  You could even pin a piece of a cherry there to make lips if you wanted.  I trimmed the end off the lemon, but in hindsight I wish I hadn't done that.  I think they looked more like bears as a result.  Use your toothpicks to attach the nose to the face. 
5. Slice a tangerine into quarters and using toothpicks place them on the top of the orange as ears.   I got mine a little too high up, try to place yours more to the side of the face to resemble a monkey.  
6. Cut a red grape in half and push it onto the face using a toothpick.  Everything will be a little loose, but once it is up against the tree it will not move much at all.  
7. Using your mango or small watermelon (watermelon would work better, but may be hard to find based on the season) as the body, attach the head using your skewers.  We ended up having to trim the skewers so make sure you have something that will snip them easily. I don't recommend sawing them as this might damage the fruit.  
8. Figure out where on the tree you want your monkeys to go.  Using skewers, push one through the head into the tree and another through the body into the tree.  
9. Now you are ready for some arms.  Get your bananas and using half skewers attach one side of the banana to the tree and the other to the body.  Do this for each of the monkey's limbs.  
10. Slice the fruit that you will be serving and arrange it beneath your tree.  We spread a plastic table cloth around underneath it to help contain all the juice from the fruit.  It worked well as a barrier.  

If you feel really adventurous, you can add an extra pineapple and an extra monkey.  When buying the fruit for the tree, look for fruit that is not yet ripe.  It will be more firm and less juicy which should make it a little bit easier to work with.

Have fun creating!

Linking up at Moonlight & Mason Jars, Krafty Inspiration Thursday,  Thursday Favorite Things Blog Hop, All Things Pretty, Let's Get Real Party, Freedom Friday, Weekend Wind Down, DIY Sunday Showcase, Pin It Hop Monday