Making your own luau decorations is half the fun.
Although many stores sell ready-made luau decorations, half the fun lies in making your own. Since a luau is a community- and relationship-building event, immerse your family and guests in the experience by creating the decorations together ahead of time. Get creative with found objects and keep a few items out of local landfills. Just picture a tropical paradise in your mind's eye and create items that bring your island haven to life. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
Palm Trees
1. Find palm tree silhouettes.
Sketch palm leaves onto 36-inch by 48-inch sheets of green poster board or institutional-size rolls of green construction paper. Curl the tips of each leaf after you cut them from the paper by rolling them lengthwise without folding them.
2. Ask carpet stores for several cardboard tubes from carpet rolls to use as trunks, or cut trunk shapes from corrugated cardboard, as suggested by the Disney's Family Fun website. Brush thinned white glue onto each carpet tube or trunk shape.
3. Wrap the tubes or cardboard shapes by overlapping 12-inch wide strips of brown paper around them. Use a staple gun to secure each end of each strip securely to the trunk until the glue dries overnight.
4. Once dry, stand each tube in a 5-gallon plastic paint bucket. Backfill the bucket with sand while a partner holds the trunk at a slight angle.
5. Attach four to six palm leaves at the top of each tube in an eye-appealing arrangement, using a hot-melt glue gun and clear glue sticks.
6. Wrap the buckets in brown burlap cloth to disguise their humble origins.
Hibiscus Flower Place Cards
7. The yellow hibiscus is Hawaii's state flower. Hibiscus can be red, pink or orange.
Cut one 6-inch, 5-inch and 4-inch hibiscus flower pattern from red, pink, orange or yellow poster board or construction paper per guest. Mahesh Bhat offers a simple hibiscus flower pattern at the website KaalaLog, which you can use if you do not want to sketch your own pattern. The Spray Paint Stencils site offers a negative-image hibiscus flower that will work as well.
8. Curl the edges of each petal around a pencil. Poke a hole through the center of each flower, using an awl or a bamboo skewer.
9. Stack three flower parts from small to large and insert a brass brad through the holes to keep them together.
10. Cut 3-inch long hibiscus leaves from green construction paper. Glue two or three leaves to a 6-inch square of white card stock, in the upper right corner.
11. Make a hole in the center of the leaf arrangement. Attach a stacked flower on top of the leaves, using the brad to hold everything together.
Tiki Torches
12. Staple a 6-inch long piece of waxed twine to a 48-inch long, 1/2-inch diameter willow rod, dowel rod or bamboo pole so that at least 1/2 inch extends past the end of the rod. The twine will serve as a wick for your torches.
13. Melt 1 to 2 pounds paraffin, tallow, beeswax, old candles or crayons at a time over low heat in a double boiler.
14. Stir in 4 to 6 cups sawdust or fine wood chips. Pack the wax mixture immediately into empty potato chip canisters.
15. While the wax mixture is still soft, insert the dowel rods with the twine wicks facing the bottom of the cans. Allow the wax to harden overnight.
16. Cut or tear away the chip canisters and pull the wick up. Place three torches per 5-gallon bucket filled with sand. Cover the buckets with burlap if desired, as you did with your palm trees.
Tags: construction paper, chip canisters, decorations half, each tube, flower pattern