Special Event Design

Mountain of Umbrellas

Kristen Waddle from Nebo Crossing in Nebo, NC brings us this cool use of umbrellas.

Their building is fairly traditional looking and has no catwalk with the 30-foot vaulted ceilings. So they had to get a bit creative.

They found white umbrellas on Overstock.com for about $2 each and a blue one from Amazon.com for $12. They hung 50lb test fishing line twisted around itself for extra strength in parallel lines using a 14′ pole stretched across the baptistry and another one stretched across the modesty rail.

They placed umbrellas in rows, going 2 high to fit the gaps. Under the blue umbrella, they cut the fabric of the white umbrellas underneath, and shone a white LED light inside. They used binder clips to secure some of the umbrellas to the fishing line.

To hide the baptistry, they hung 3 white shower curtain liners with clear rings. $25.

The clouds were printed on multiple sheets of 12×40 paper (about $1 each from Toshiba) and pieced together, then pasted onto large sheets of cardboard. They were able to get the cardboard from a local box factory for $5 each for 4’x8′ sheets. Each cloud cost about $10 each.

The clouds were duct taped on the back to a metal stud they had left over from a building project. They screwed the stud sideways across the baptistry, right through the door frames.

The light boxes were actually furnace filters. They found the filters for $1 each at Roses Department Store.

Entire stage design, not including the LED lights, cost around $250.

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3d Lettérs Taller Trees

11 responses to “Mountain of Umbrellas”

  1. Roxan Park says:

    The stage looked great! The best part was the message delivered over several weeks with the Pastor using an additional blue umbrella to emphasize the message of how and why we need to get under God’s umbrella! The visual added a strong memorable “picture” to the message.

  2. Zeb Davis says:

    I thought it was a great display. I and my wife were wondering how the clouds were there, and I didn’t investigate. I appreciate the cost effective method used to grab my imagination and leave an image to relate to the sermon series.

  3. Jen Young says:

    I LOVE THIS! Simple, elegant, contemporary and on a budget :) Great work!

  4. Jayne Robart says:

    How did you put the filters together to make the colums

  5. Kristen says:

    Jayne – there’s another article on here… Just search filters. It’s just a whole lot of black duct tape!

  6. Beautiful idea and I love the stickiness of this visual in relation to your series.

  7. Ben Davis says:

    Great to see my filter design being used once again! This is pretty awesome! Great job!

  8. Jack says:

    Great use of Bens filter design. I like the straight stacks a little better personally, we are in the process now of making four for our stage. Quick question though did anyone who uses these ligth towers have trouble balancing them and have to anchor them to the ceiling? I’d be afraid to even touch them cause these filters are pretty flimsy.

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