Throwing a Jungle Party, Part 3: Leaves & Vines

I think this deserves an entire post to itself because creating vines and cutting out a LOT of leaves takes a LOT of time. The great thing is this can be done while watching TV ;)

To create vines, I purchased a large role of brown packing paper, it weighs about 50lbs! This is a serious role of paper. It's only about 2-3 feet wide, but it goes on for 1400 feet or something crazy like that. This can be purchased online or at a UPS store. I unrolled about 10-12 feet and cut it from it's roll. Than I grabbed one end, bunched it together and started rolling it in one direction. Very important not to switch direction- it will unravel. I continued rolling and crimping every few feet to keep it secure until the end. You have to use nails or some heavy duty tape to stick it to your walls because this will be fairly heavy. I hung one across our kitchen by tying some twine to our cabinet hinges. I than tied the twine to the vines and it stayed for over a week! Consider tying it to a curtain rod 

caution: make sure your curtain rod, or whatever you tie it to, is stable and secure and will not fall and cause injury. 

I did this a week in advance, both to make sure the vines would stay, but also because it could be done in advance. Why not do it as early as possible so its one thing checked off your list?

After the vines were literally hung throughout the house, I cut the leaves. I used two different colors of green paper. Regular printing paper or construction paper will work for this. It doesn't have to be thick paper. Using my template I cut out the leaves. I folded them in half while cutting to make sure they were symmetrical and to give the leaf a nice crease! I probably cut over 100 leaves. I used them on the vines and I laid them out on the different tables. They added a nice decorative touch.