Christmas Designs

Paint, Pallet, Light

Jeremy Huddleston from Saddleback Church Huntington Beach in Orange County, CA brings us this great use of negative space in pallets.

As a portable campus, they needed something that brought the Christmas vibe to their weekend experience but could be rolled out of the High School in a few minutes when they tore down. After seeing several pallet sets on this site, Jeremy decided that was the look he wanted to go for.

They contacted a local rock company who had plenty of pallets they were happy to let them take for free. They laid them out until they made panels that were 7′ or more tall and spliced them together with small pieces of 2×4 on the back. Once that was done, they snapped chalk lines and painted out the negative space in black, leaving their Christmas tree shape in the natural wood.

After the paint dried, they stapled Christmas lights along the outside of the shape. The Christmas lights were attached to cheap dimmers so they could control them with their lighting software. Then the panels were stood up and an extra pallet screwed to the side to make a leg that would hold the panel upright. 3 rolling casters were added so they could roll easily.

Being portable, they don’t have a back light truss, so these panels gave them something to attach their Chauvet Light bars too as well.

They are moving into a new building February 1 and they also needed to make this set last one more month. So (as you can see in the last pic) they just painted out the bottom of the trees and turned the shapes into diamonds so they could get a few more weeks out of them.

Cost:
Pallets – Free
Casters – Under $100 (and totally reusable for future props) Home Depot
Paint – $25 (one gallon and plenty left for the next project)
Christmas Lights – $48 (One set does a panel and Hobby Lobby seems to carry these nearly year round.)
Misc – $25 (2×4’s, screws)

Extra Value – These will be used for January then taken apart, painted, and used again for our youth stage.

Trees1

Trees2

Trees3

Trees4

Trees5

Trees6

Trees7

Trees8

Trees9

Trees10

Monument Stage Tree Panels

2 responses to “Paint, Pallet, Light”

  1. Esther Oakley says:

    What a great innovative way to use pallets! A couple years ago I never would have imagined the versatility of such a common object. Just recently I used them as a base for my bed. The bed is now elevated off of the ground and the pallets match the rest of my room.

    http://www.oldetymepallets.com/products_and_services.html

  2. Tony Smith says:

    This was an incredible idea. So good in fact that I wanted to use it. I needed them to be a little lighter so I made the planks from ply wood and braced them with a couple 2×4’s. I wrote a blog post about the build here: https://tonysmithworship.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/constructing-christmas-big-church-ideas-small-church-budget-3/

    Thank you for being so inspiring. Keep up the good work.

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