Easter Designs

Chalks and Paper Strips

Glendale Matias from Oasis Church in Los Angeles, California brings us these Easter elements from all over their church.

The visual arts team was tasked on developing a few key spaces within the church – particularly areas with high traffic to be visually interesting. They wanted people walking through the church to feel spring and the newness of Easter. Some of those concepts translated to color (variation of green), material (linear/modern wood installations) and stage lighting (paper lanterns).

On stage, they built a slatted wood wall (they found a few concepts floating around churchstagedesignideas.com) and built a platform using plain pine wood which they stained cherry. The structure was 8′ x 20′. They took this concept and applied it to their inner lobby around a very prominent load-bearing pole.

They also used colored chalk and created a grid on the cafe wall with tape and filled in the squares with colored chalk. They made these mobile frames (Think a door jamb without the door and with feet so they could freely stand). They painted strips of wood (recycled from an older project) and cut them into linear strips and attached those strips to the frames.

Photo credit: Mat Fretschel

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9 responses to “Chalks and Paper Strips”

  1. Josh says:

    I am very inspired by the chalk squares on the wall! I have been looking for something very low budget to make a huge impact. A few questions: Were the walls just regular drywall with flat black paint? Did you simply tape up the squares, chalk the various boxes and remove the tape? If there were people getting back behind the tables, what did you coat the chalk with in order to keep the chalk from smearing and getting on people’s clothes? I know we used hairspray for smaller projects but we would need a lot of it to accomplish our project. Amazing look to the areas that you did!

    • Thank you Josh!
      Yes the walls are regular drywalls with wall-texture. The paint is not entirely flat black, we mixed in some chalkboard paint. The chalkboard paint is more porous then the flat black (we tested) and held the chalk 100 times better.
      We used masking tape for the grid, and purchased sidewalk chalk and filled in all the squares. After that was complete, we removed the masking tape and it left behind the black spacing. We were done at this point, the smearing was part of the piece.

  2. Dan says:

    Was there any type of sealing or spray that was applied to the squares after chalking them to keep them from getting smudged?

    • Nothing was applied to the chalk. There was a lot of chalk dust on the ground when we were done, but the chalk on the paint held it’s own. If you want a more permanent look, yes I would use a light clear coat that was compatible with the paint. Hairspray/fix-all works too.

  3. Mary Koob says:

    What type of texture is on your wall? Orange Peel? Knock down?

  4. Ashley says:

    How did you all get the chalk off the wall after it was all said and done??

  5. Heather says:

    How did you hang the lanterns on the stage? Our projector screen is in a similar location and if we hang from the ceiling the string is in front of the projector.

    Thanks :)

  6. Jay S. says:

    Any instructions and materials list for the paper strip panels?

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