Joey Riggins from Lighthouse Church in Panama City Beach, Florida brings us this stage design for their Christmas theme—”A Neon Christmas”.
The first challenge was finding neon paint that was affordable. Joey was able to find neon paint from discountschoolsupplies.com for a reasonable price.
After figuring out the spacing for everything, the actual construction of the set was fairly easy. He started with four 4×8 pieces of Coroplast and painted them in 4 different neon colors.
To build the colorful strips, he used 3 inch furring strips nailed to cheap plywood painted black. He spaced the strips 2 inches apart (using 3 pieces of identically cut 2 inch 2×4 pieces as guides). This fit 11 strips on each sheet of plywood. When hanging them, they stacked two 4×8 pieces on top of each other keeping the spacing (they made them on the ground for the purpose of accounting for overlap).
For the “light bright” piece mounted between the screens, he used a 3-inch hole saw and and made a template on a sheet of Coroplast, drilled out the holes, and taped the sheet of Coroplast on top of 3 sheets of styrofoam. He then simply drilled the holes out using the template so when hung everything lined up. He then randomly stuffed the holes with 9oz neon cups from blacklight.com and super glued them in place.
To keep the panels from bending he velcroed furring strips on the back that spanned the width of the styrofoam. To hang them, he used a 6 inch piece of furring strip on each side going up and down, velcroed it, and then drilled in a hook to the top of it and hung it from chain (using industrial velcro).
The splatter paint artwork was just 4×3 sheets of Coroplast in an ascending pattern along the walls.
To finish the set off, he added neon elements to the drum riser and shield as well as taped their guitars with gaffers tape and put neon strings on them. He also ran some of the new style LED Christmas lights that appear brighter and have a neon feel to them in and on top of their lighting truss to add a bit of Christmas to the design.
It cost around $500-600 after purchasing the paint, wood, and styrofoam. Also note that the paint didn’t really work that great on the Coroplast. Its a children’s paint and wipes off really easily and was spotty on plastic. He would recommend using wood as much as possible—minus the splatter paint panels. They were fine.
Love this design!! Wanting to use these ideas for our upcoming series. Do you remember the specific paint product you found from discount school supplies?
howard@firstag.org
This looks amazing.
How does it look when you light it with all red or all blue light?
Really awesome.
nice…..nice….n…..nice :-)
This looks awesomse! I was also wanting to replicate this stage for a kids service we are doing and was wondering if you knew the specific paint product you used?
This looks awesomse! I was also wanting to replicate this stage for a kids service we are doing and was wondering if you knew the specific paint product you used?
Brady@harvesttime.net
@Brady I replicated this idea and ended up using “Biocolor Fluorescent 1 Gallon Paint” from the site they referenced discountschoolsupply.com It was spot on and worked really well!
Good Luck!
pics??? I’d love to see your end result. joeyriggins83@yahoo.com
@Adam thanks for the info. I found exactly what you were talking about!!!
Hey all,
So sorry I never had a chance to respond. I didn’t get any notifications for whatever reason. It seems that you all handed together and figured it out. If anyone has any more questions, email me directly at joeyriggins83@yahoo.com.
Happy designing.
What kind of lighting would be necessary to allow this design to look its best?
I’m not sure i fully follow the question. Do you mean how did I light it? or do you mean how could i have lit it better? I’ll answer both. I used a mi of 3w blizzard led cans and color key LED par cans. I would have rather used LED strip lights for a more even coverage on the neon colored panels. I think the spots were fine on the cups. Also, i pretty much used the blue LED color on most of the set. It gave it that neon pop i wanted. We would do some color changes throughout the worship set for variety and mood but ultimately always came back to the blue. Hope this helps. Email me at joeyriggins83@yahoo.com with any more questions.
This is beautiful.
I love it and will replicate same in my church.