Christmas Designs

Colored Tangles

Amber Schultze from Prairie Heights Community Church in Fargo, North Dakota brings us these drops of colorful tangles. (originally posted January 2014)

Material list (approx. $280):
– 9,000 standard paper clips
– 1,000 jumbo paper clips
– 1,000 paint sticks
– various paint colors
– 15 strings of 8′ lights
– scrap wood
– 120 eye hooks
– extension cords

This design was inspired by the series logo which featured colorful, child-like brush strokes. More than 50 volunteers on a bus helped to make paper clip chains out of 9,000 standard-size paper clips. Amber used a drill press to make quick work of creating a hole at the top of the paint sticks. The 1,000 paint sticks were divided into the five featured colors and hand-painted. Metallic sheens were added on top of a portion of the sticks to give more dimension on stage.

Each 2-foot section of scrap wood featured 24 eye hooks for the paper clip chains to drop from at varying lengths. The paint sticks were hooked on one at a time with jumbo paper clips in a random pattern to create the “brushstroke” look.

Because this was their Christmas season set, they attached three strands of 8′ white Christmas lights to dangle behind the chains. Each section was attached to the other with an extension cord. The paper clip panels were then hung from the top of their drapery using S-hooks.

Prairie Heights is a mobile church meeting in the same location every week. Because of this, all of their designs must also be mobile to be set up and stored weekly.

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Christmas Boards Christmas, Blown Up

3 responses to “Colored Tangles”

  1. With all the volunteer help, how much time approximately did it take?

  2. kevin eoff says:

    Nice! way to be portable and storable!

  3. Amber Schultze says:

    Making the paper clip chains, & adding clips to the end of the paint sticks took less than an hour with our bus full of volunteers! I painted the sticks later and it took a few hours per color.

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