It’s amazing what a little rolled paper can do!

Recently, Amazon has started packing shipments with giant wads of brown paper.  I don’t know if it’s coming from Amazon itself or one of their vendors. But for some reason the last 6 or 7 deliveries I received were cushioned by snakelike vines of rolled paper.  Wait a minute...did I say...vines?

Yep...leave it to Amazon packing materials to inspire my team.  

As it happened, we had a jungle party coming up. The request from the client was, “Really do up the decor”.  Now, you have to understand, this was not my first trip on the African Queen. I have plenty of cute decorations. This client wanted it to be special.  My crew and I set about trying to find something spectacular that fit wihin the budget.  We looked at images of the jungle. The thing that kept coming back was the vines. Those Tarzan swinging ropes of twisted vegetation. That happened to look an awful lot like our exploding Amazon boxes.  

When our next shipment arrived, we pulled out the twisted paper, hung it from a door frame, and declared it our newest decorating discovery.  Deciding that we didn’t have time to wait around for the necessary number of shipments to create our decor, I hopped online and was able to find rolls of kraft butcher paper for under $30.00. I opted for the wider 4-foot rolls to get the full vine effect, but you can find 18” wide for under $20.00.  When the package arrived, suprisingly not wrapped in butcher paper, we cut it into 20 foot strips, and began rolling.  It was a simple task of twisting from one end to the next, making an awesomely ridgy, textural tube.  We made sure to twist the ends super tight, which kept them from unrolling, and then wrapped them loosely in some vine garland we had hanging around.  That’s all there was to it.

Being that it was hot and sunny in our jungle, we had umbrellas everywhere. They made a great backdrop for the twisting decor. My sister Freda simply ziptied one end and began weaving. Tuck in a few Dollar Tree stuffed snakes, our standard jungle birds, and a few giant leaf shades that I picked up on sale at Ikea, and we had ourselves an instant jungle.

I was also able to discover these crazy curtains on Amazon.  They come in every image imaginable. My initial plan was to use them for a photo backdrop, but it turned out we already had a useable backdrop in stock. So we used them on either side of the entry instead.

When all was said and done we spent about $150.00 on our decor.  But it looked like a million bucks.