Stage Designs

Paper Love

Jason Caldwell from Peninsula Bible Fellowship in Silverdale, WA brings us this stage design that would work perfect or Valentine’s Day.

Jason: For Advent this year, we are finishing a year long series on fruits of the spirit by focusing on Love. From a design standpoint, our room presents some challenges: it is often lit brighter than most venues featured on CSDI and we have two large walls to fill on either side of the stage as our backdrop/pallet. (think of a gym with the stage in the middle of the long wall). So we needed something that looks good with the house lights on, and something tactile up close.

We collected old sheet music for about 2 months from Goodwill, estate sales, garage sales. We used old hymnals that were falling apart as well. We needed enough sheet music to cover walls 52′ long by 20′ high.

The (2) ‘Love’ signs were cut out of 4 pieces of 1/2″ plywood. We used a projector to trace the image and then cut out the letters with a jig saw. The ‘L’ letter took one whole sheet of ply, and the ‘ove’ took another. The font used was called Bromello. The paint is from Sherwin Williams called Pomegranate. 1″ black nails were handnailed every 2.5 inches. And finally we wrapped the entire sign in Fairy Lights. The letter L took two boxes(33′ ea.) of lights wrapped twice, and the ‘ove’ took three boxes.

To get the sheet music on the wall, we stapled it on with an office stapler. It was the fastest and most economical way to go. Plus the staples came out of the sheet rock easily with little marking left over. The sheet music was turned this way and that to get a chaotic look. It took 3 hours to cover the walls. We also put some in the foyers to carry the look in there.

LED globe lights from Ikea were used to flank the Love sing: NITTIO.

were hung from long lighting extension wires also found at Ikea. These are super cool LED lights than shine through a plastic wire to look like an Edison bulb. I appreciated that I didn’t have to put them on a dimmer: they look great for ambience at full power.

The red wreath on the cross is a magnolia wreath from The Magnolia Company. We’ve used this the last couple years. Not cheap, but beautiful against the cross.

The Chandeliers were inspired from another design on this site: Patterns of Rain. Our jazz Christmas eve set needed some chandeliers!

We copied their design pretty closely, except we shrunk the size a bit. The large Chandelier was 5′ in diameter and the two smaller ones were 3′. we used 8 total strands of beaded crystals.

Cost Breakdown:

  • Plywood 4 sheets @ $20 = $80
  • Fairy Lights 10 boxes @ $10 = $100
  • Quart of Paint $12
  • Ikea bulbs 20 @ $8 ea. = $160
  • Light extensions 20 @ $4ea. = $80
  • old Sheet music $30
  • Large Chandellier $75
  • (2) small Chandeliers 2 @ $60 ea. = $120

Grand Total: Approximately $650

Total man hours: 35

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Sundry Trees Portable Screens

One response to “Paper Love”

  1. Joey Palmer says:

    Hello!

    Did you have DMX control of the fairy lights? If so what power supply and decoders did you use?

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