The creative team from Westtown Church in Tampa, FL brings us this cool wall with an innovative way to make some stars dim and some bright.
The star wall was built by hanging landscape fabric from ceiling to floor. Instead of regular black fabric, landscape fabric was used to help keep the cost down. Metal conduit was hung from the ceiling to support the fabric. Another conduit was hung right behind to support the weight of roughly 30 strands of Christmas lights. Some lights were pushed through the fabric and some left hanging behind (which still could be seen from the front, though muted) creating depth. There was also a higher concentration of lights pushed through at the top of the fabric and less and less as you go down the wall, attempting to create the illusion of a starry night. The lights were connected to dimmer packs to brighten/dim the entire wall of lights.
Real Christmas trees of random heights were placed on stage, in front of the star wall. LED uplighting was used to also add depth.
In the foyer, pallet walls were hung with a rectangle of Christmas tree trunk cross sections overlapped. Block letters “He Has Come” were hung within the rectangle. Real Christmas trees were placed at random within the foyer. 2 bags of cinnamon scented pine cones were also used.
Total cost for the design was around $400. 7 Christmas trees and bases were around $275 and the light wall was roughly $125. (3) 50′ rolls of landscape fabric and (30) strands of 100 bulb white Christmas light strands.
Your starry night backdrop is beautiful! I’m a member of a smaller country church in Oregon and am in charge of decorating. I’m hoping you will tell me how to do the starry night backdrop so I can incorporate it this year during our first annual Christmas bazaar and for our Christmas play and decorating.
Hey Marla. Sorry if this response is too late. For the backdrop, we used landscaping fabric available in rolls at your local Lowes or Home Depot (more affordable than real black fabric of that quantity). We suspended that from some conduits at the ceiling. We needed a black backdrop since we do not have a black/dark back wall. We hung another conduit (cheap metal pipe) right behind the landscape fabric to support the weight of approx 30 strands of Christmas lights, so the fabric wouldn’t sag. We then pushed the lights through the fabric (they will hold without hot glue or another adhesive). We patterned them lights thicker/close together at the top and more sparse as we went down. The lights were connected to a dimmer pack for control of the brightness.
Hope that helps!