We have SO much fun putting together our Epic vacation bible school every year and I wanted to share with you what we have been up to! With it nearing VBS season again I thought I would take a trip down memory lane and share with you some great ideas that you can use for your own VBS! This year (2014) the theme was Wilderness Survival. The vision was to decorate the church with both desert and jungle themes! This was my first time in the role of "lead decor" and I had NO idea what I was doing (picture having to keep this all in fire code, yikes!) but luckily it all came together in the end!
I will try to explain my technique for making things as I go...
The "sand" is just tan fabric by the yard from Joann's. I believe we ordered a few bolts online. The camel prop was ordered from the VBS catalog (we have since created out own VBS curriculum). The rocks are painted pieces of styrofoam. Keep going to see how we did the palm trees and vines.
This large hallway I wanted to look like a cave! We used brown paper bags (amazingly cheap on dollartree.com) and crinkled them up and stapled them to the wall. WARNING: this took forever so I would suggest you stretch them as your staple to cover way more wall with less bag. And MUCH less staples! The effect in here was amazing!
Here are our palm trees! We used pool noodles to create these. Cut a hole in a box a tad smaller than the noodle (so it stands up), cut the bottom off brown paper bags, and string them onto the noodle! I put a large paper plate on top to tape the leaves to. The leaves are just traces and cut from a roll of non-fade green paper. Drape the base in burlap or tan fabric to look like sand.
That last picture is of our class photo area!
The vines were my favorite craft! We used plastic table cloths from the Dollar Tree in a couple of different shades of green. These were really easy and each table cloth yeilds a ton of vines. Fold your tablecloth the long way a few times will it is about 5" wide. Trim the sides so you end up with long strips. Cut diagonal lines to the middle. TIP: make sure you stagger them so you dont ever cut all the way through! And even if you do you can always use short vines too!
We used these EVERYWHERE! They were great fillers and really tied the theme together! As you will see in the second picture, we also used nets and hula skirts (dollartree.com) everywhere!
The monkeys were also ordered online and below I will tell you how we made the rope vines...
These rope vines were made using cut, twisted and staples brown paper bags. If I did this again, I would use skinny strips of rolled kraft paper instead. If would have gotten done much faster! We stapled leaves (again cut out of the non-fade paper) when we were done. These also went everywhere and were great for covering large expanses like the ceiling in the cafe. We also wrapped them around the check in area.
Also on the ceiling you will see colorful paper lanterns. These are from Oriental Trading Company.
This giant tree was my biggest project! The frame is made from PVC. It ended up being 12 feet tall! We used the rolls of brown kraft paper here as well. It is simple... roll it out, wrinkle it up, stretch it out, and tape it on top to bottom! The last picture shows you what it looked like from the inside.
The branches were made the same way but left wrinkled and twisted. I wanted to add more but we ran out of time!
This hallway is always the kids favorite. The black light hallway!
Luckily one wall was already dark, the other we wrapped with a roll of black non-fade paper. The volunteers had fun make fish, octopus, turtles and other sea creatures using white paper and fluorescent paint! These were then stapled onto the wall. The floor was covered in clear balloons that we squirted with the florescent paint on the inside.
The jellyfish are paper lanterns lightly painted with fluorescent paint, with streamers and white string hanging from them. The ceiling also had streamers and nets.
The openeing to this hallways was made to look like a waterfall. We used clear celo wrap, paper bags (done in the same way as the cave hallway) and the flowers were made using more non-fade paper.
And because the nursery kids are important too... we gave them a little decor!