Now I have to admit, this may have been one of my favorite DIY Ah-Ha moments. Wyatt’s birthday is in January, so The Floor is Lava and Volcanoes were all we talked about while planning through Christmas. It hit me that we’d been surrounded by DIY Volcanos all this time! So when the time came after Christmas to take down the trees, we just moved them into the garage where they each transitioned into Giant Volcano Decoration!
Giant Volcano Decoration | Christmas Trees
The whole process was really, pretty easy! I just bought a roll of brown paper on Amazon and we wrapped them up. We had 4 Christmas Trees, 2 real and 2 fake. We wrapped them all!
Covering the Trees
The biggest one obviously took the most paper. Billy held up the roll as high as he could reach and we cut 4 pieces of paper, overlapping them to cover the whole tree. We made a cape-like collar at the top of each to make it look like it was erupting. Make sure to scrunch or wrinkle your brown paper, so it looks rocky.
The hardest part, which we should have done FIRST, was dropping the Christmas Lights down into the paper and finding them to plug them in. It would have been a lot easier if we had done it first, but I didn’t want them to get spray paint on them.
With the remaining brown paper roll, we covered a cabinet in the middle of the obstacle course and made it into a volcano as well. The hypothetical volcano supplying the Obstacle Course Lava, as we told the kids.
See how the garage door brackets are centered around that cabinet? It turns out we were able to make this volcano a great focal point for the whole party by adding lava streamers around those brackets. You can check that out over in the Obstacle Course Blog Post.
Spray Painting the Volcanos
With all our trees transformed into Volcanos, it was time to paint the lava. We bought three colors of spray paint and layered the colors red, orange, and yellow. Trying to let the paint drip all on its own, (like a really bad spray paint job) it turned out exactly how I intended. I did keep letting layers dry, adding more days apart. Yep, we let this party take over our garage for almost a whole week before it happened. So remember, none of this happened in one day! It took nearly 8 days to set up entirely, including the morning before the party.
Lighting and Final Touches
When all the spray paint is dry install the string lights and tops. Billy also put a red light bulb right over this main volcano to give it this warm glow where kids entered the Lava Pit.
We used Christmas lights and just looped them into lava flows. I scrunched the orange tissue paper we still had leftover from Wyatt’s last birthday party, the Rocket Blaster Backpacks, to cover the lights. Bunch a few pieces together like a gift bag and stuck them in the top.
For this super awesome Lava Eruption, I doubled up a party… I do LOVE to reuse things from past parties, as you know and these beauties were actually the coral I made for my niece’s Mermaid Party three years ago! Check out the How to Make Coral {and now Lava} DIY Guide over on the Events Blog.
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