Shooting Stars & Bricks

Sean Bolinger from Christian Faith Center in Federal Way, WA brings us this awesome use of LED strips and brick texture. 

For this set they wanted to do an 80’s urban feel. Sean got the idea to use the brick for a backdrop from watching ‘Next Food Network Star’. Their whole set has a lot of brick lit with LED light and he loved the way it looked on TV. It added more texture than just a flat up-lit wall. Then he knew he wanted to attach LED strips to the front that would mimic old neon tubes that were so popular in 80’s clubs and décor.

They started by buying 4×8’ sheets of fake brick from Home Depot and attaching them to a frame made up of 2×4’s. Lining up the seams and making the sheets look like a solid wall took a bit of time but it wasn’t too difficult. For attaching the LED’s to the wall, they took All-thread and cut it into 8ft strips. Then they took 6in. pieces of All-Thread and welded two pieces on to each 8ft stick. Then they drilled holes in the brick wall and using a nut and washer on each side of the wall. They secured them 4 inches off the wall to give some depth and help the LED’s pop. They took the LED strips and zip tied them to the All-thread with the bottom end of the strip bending around the bottom brace and going back into the wall to give it more of the neon tube look. Then they wired up the LED’s on the backside of the wall.

We already owned the LED bars that are lighting the brick and the LED strips, so the only cost we had was for the brick which is $25 a sheet at Home Depot. We used 15 sheets for our set which is 40 feet wide and 12 feet tall. So overall we only spent around $400 on this set.