Wrong turned out right

I knew that I needed to post pictures of how the VBS decorations turned out, but I felt like the pictures made it look all perfect and brilliant, which is really only half the story. Through this I learned several ways not to make palm trees, that Pinterest pictures can be kind of evil, and that the LifeWay idea book may have very good intentions, but is extremely unrealistic without a design team and a large budget. In the end, I am rather glad I didn't have the team and budget. Instead, I had  a couple of awesome friends who would take an hour or two here and there to cut stuff, hand me things, and listen to me talk out my plans. I got to rummage through every storage closet and supply room in our church finding things I could re-purpose. It was like a crafting treasure hunt.
Okay, pretty first.
Our church divided our VBS into two parts. The elementary aged children start the day in our main sanctuary and the preschool starts in our chapel. The church purchased a backdrop panel for each one, and I was tasked with dressing them up and building off the backdrop.
This is the chapel. It is actually a very old church that the rest of the church grew around. I love the chapel.

To get to it you go through a small hallway. I lined one side with vines made of plastic tablecloths, tissue paper butterflies, and small crepe paper flowers.

The other side has a bulletin board, which I covered with a themed mapped.

One the way out of the chapel you pass a piano that we didn't want little fingers playing on. It became a waterfall. Nix had a brilliant idea to use one of the failed palms as a rock pool border.

One of the other ideas that worked well was the signs I made. These were part of an old VBS project where another brave soul with more talent than me had painted foam board to look like wood. I trimmed down pieces, touched up the paint, and then painted the middle with chalkboard paint. After this year I realized that the more reusable I can make things, the better. I made a bunch of these things and put them all over the place. This also has reused yard sticks for the post.

Now for the big one. This is also where we do pick up and where the family night program will be. Everyone sees it and I wanted it to be magical.

Main stage

 Waterfall complete with tree house and rope bridge.

The large painted animals are again reused from the aforementioned talent that came before me.  I just gave the frogs a fresh coat of paint in more jungley colors.
I really love how the vines and large flowers turned out. The flowers were not a pinterest idea, so that made them different from any of the flowers in the classrooms. They were hung all along the balcony. I made a dozen flowers in total.

I had some extra palm leaves (because I can't do math during summer vacation) and this garland I saw in the Oriental Trading Catalog. I knew I'd use it, I just didn't know where until it came in. It fit perfectly in the foyer on the half wall upstairs. It was one of the things I didn't plan but worked (as opposed to the things I did plan that didn't work)

Okay, That's the pretty. Later I will give you the ugly of it all. I didn't want to taint this image of lovely by pulling back the curtain just yet.