Stage Designs

Throwback: Patterns of Rain

Sean Bolinger from Christian Faith Center in Federal Way, WA brings us this awesome use of chandeliers. (originally posted May 2013)

This design was for their “Celebrate” Womens Conference.

They wanted to create something very classy so they went with some different types of chandeliers. They made one giant one, 4 small ones, and two spirals. They were all made with plumbers pipe, i-hooks, and cheap crystal acrylic.

How they did it:

Big chandelier

  • 9ft wide and 8ft tall
  • 5 rings- 1. 9ft diameter 2. 7.5ft diameter 3. 6ft diameter 4. 4.5ft diameter 5. 3ft diameter
  • They used plumbers pipe – which is like PVC pipe only it comes in 100ft spools so it has a natural curve and can bend it easily unlike PVC.
  • Then they drilled holes every 2 inches in each ring and screwed in an i-hook in each hole.
  • Then they did 3 different lengths of acrylic on each ring with the longest pieces on the center ring and the shortest pieces on the outer ring. Because of that there were 15 different lengths of acrylic which gave a cool random look.
  • Then they lit it from the sides with 4 Revolutions (Glorified moving source4’s that have built in color scrollers and gobos)

4 Small Chandeliers

  • 3ft wide and 4ft tall
  • They did the exact same process on these only instead of doing different lengths of acrylic on each ring, each ring was the same length all the way around.
  • They lit them from the top with an LED Par each.

2 Spirals

  • These were 25ft tall and about 4ft wide (it varied at different spots)
  • They took a 100ft spool of plumbers pipe and cut it in half, then they drilled holes every 2 inches and screwed in i-hooks.
  • They hung one end in their catwalks and let the other end down to the ground. Since it was packaged in a tight spoil, it kept a natural coil which they supported at points with black tie line.
  • Then we hung 3ft long strands of acrylic from each i-hook and lit them from the top and bottom with LED Par lights.

They bought the acrylic here for $19/100-feet. They used 47 rolls of the acrylic (4700ft, 580ft short of a mile)

Their budget was $1500.

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Read Between the Lines A Carpenter's Christmas

18 responses to “Throwback: Patterns of Rain”

  1. Robert James says:

    Looks great. What did the large one cost to make?

    • Sean Boliner says:

      The large one cost about 550$ for the acrylic, the i-hooks, the pipe, and the frame to hold the pipe together.

  2. Jacob Kesling says:

    This is beautiful! I do not see a screen anywhere… did you use any projection during this venue?

  3. Nate says:

    What did you use to gather the fabric in the middle?

    • Sean B says:

      I used a small piece of the acrylic from the chandeliers. I just gathered the fabric in the middle and tied the piece around and put the knot in the back so it couldn’t be seen and then put a piece of gray gaff tape to hold it in place so it didn’t shift lower on the fabric. But people were so far away I could’ve just used white string and nobody would have noticed.

  4. johnNinja says:

    did you have to build this on set? or have you been able to box it up and then pull it out?

  5. Sean B says:

    We put it up the week of the event and after we boxed it up to use again for different events. The big center chandelier I actually built for my wedding which was 9 months prior to this event, after the wedding we stored it and planned to use it for this event. We hung the frames in a storage space and then gathered all the acrylic into same size pieces and placed them into bags.

  6. Stephanie says:

    Where did you buy the acrylic from?

  7. Sheila says:

    This design is beautiful!!! When you use the term i-hook what exactly are you talking about? A cup hook with nut on the back or wood screw type, or the”o” screw thing with nut on back or just screws in?

  8. Martin Underhaug says:

    How many rolls of acrylic did you use? Looks beautiful btw :)

  9. Beverly says:

    How heavy was the large chandelier??

  10. Vivian says:

    I’m trying to figure out how you attached the rings of the large chandelier together. You mentioned using i-hooks…are you sure you don’t mean eye hooks? Also, what did you use to suspend and hang the fixture?

  11. Anna says:

    I am also needing to know how the loops were attached together. I am trying to think of all kinds of ideas and am struggling big time. I zoomed in on the picture the best I could and can see some type of X structure. Curious how this was attached to the loops?

  12. Chayanika says:

    What was the dimension of the plumbers pipe? Did you use a 1/2 inch ones or 3/4th inches?

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