Man-made forest

If you have ever found yourself needing to decorate for VBS, you know what a overwhelming task it CAN be..... This year, I really enjoyed doing it! My vision was for the front part to be the campsite with a waterfall in the background and for the isle to be like walking through the forest. I did not have a big budget, so I think we DIY'D it pretty well :) 

The Tree Trunk was made out of a carpet roll covered in brown crumpled paper. 

This INSANE water fall  was built by my mom. The base is a rickety old ladder. She stacked random size boxes onto each rung. Next she covered in crumpled brown paper. To make look realistic, spray paint with grey spray paint. Cover the front of the ladder with blue paper, taping down to look like the water is cascading. Cover blue with cellophane, but add your flowing lights to it first. 

Rocks were made out of grey/brown paper. We added blue mesh to the water in the "pool" to add dimension. 

DO NOT THROW AWAY OLD CHRISTMAS TREES!!!! Do you see all that greenery??!?!?! That is old tree branches! We also used these in the windows and on the table arrangements in our Fellowship Hall. 

The Canoe's were a nice touch! Especially since we have blue carpet :) 

Those chains are supposed to look like the tree branches and leaves. It takes a ton to cover a space this large though!!! They were a bit of a pain to hang, because our ceilings are so tall... so, it was the most manual labor decorating for this project. BUT, the kids loved it! And, surprisingly they lasted all week (and we didn't have any problems with kids trying to jump and grab them). Wahoo!

We also had tissue paper pom-poms hung in the mix. 

Crazy Kids! Thank goodness the canoes are my husbands, so he didn't mind people playing just a little. 

I hope this may help someone when they get stumped on how to decorate.... It wasn't all the "easiest", but it was very cost effective and people seemed to really enjoy it. 

This was one of those things that was hard to capture a picture of.... I tried doing a video, but unless you want to be motion sick, I don't think I will post it.