Christmas Designs

Twigs and Stretches

Colton Johnson from Lemont Calvary Church in Lemont, IL brings us this mixture of twigs, stretch fabric, and light bulbs.

Materials:

  • Several dozen branches and small trees
  • 1 gallon of white parking lot paint
  • Several spray cans of white paint
  • 10 hanging bulbs
  • 2 spandex rectangles
  • 2 LED 1-meter bar lights
  • 4 LED par can lights
  • 4 large containers filled with sand (to hold large branches)

They painted the larger limbs and trees with white parking lot paint. It’s significantly thicker than normal exterior/interior paints, so it holds nicely to the bark and absorbs well. It’s also more affordable than most latex.

They spray painted the smaller branches. Then they spray-painted some large containers (pulled from a dumpster) black and filled them with sand to hold the large limbs up. They purchased the sand from a local quarry.

They needed much more sand than they anticipated, 590 lbs to be exact. That’s about a half a bed of a normal sized pickup truck. This would cost a small fortune if purchased in bags from a hardware store, but from a quarry it cost them $3.94. A concrete plant also quoted them about the same price.

The hanging bulbs were simply 9ft extension cords, with bulb sockets and 7-watt refrigerator bulbs. The cords cost them $1.25, the sockets were $.79, and the bulbs ran $.89 each. The cheapest comparable hanging socket Colton could find online was around $6 and did not include a bulb. The bulbs, in person, have a very dim-retro appearance but are several dollars cheaper than filament bulbs.

Not including stage lights and spandex, they spent about $90.

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One response to “Twigs and Stretches”

  1. angela Heim says:

    How did they hang the spandex and where did they get it from?

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