Christmas Designs

Throwback: Cardboard Ornaments

Chase Austin from Champions Community Church in Houston, TX brings us this great Christmas stage design incorporating cardboard ornaments. (Originally posted January 2013)

They started with a giant black curtain draped along the back wall of their stage. Then they hung strands of Christmas lights vertically from the ceiling truss. One of their guys created a cable that would allow them to plug them into their dimmer box and control them from the light board.

Then they began playing with draping the fabric (they used a 4 way stretch fabric from a local fabric shop). Eventually they settled with the star pattern seen in the pictures. They created sandbags out of playground sand, trash bags, and black pillow cases to hold the fabric to form. They lit the fabric from the top with three American DJ MegaBar lights and from the bottom with three Venue Thinpar 64’s.

Finally they hung ornaments from the ceiling grid around the light truss. The ornaments were made from cardboard boxes that were donated by people in the church. Designs were drawn and cut while the boxes were flat, which created a perfect replica of each ornament shape. They painted them in shades of gold, silver, and white and applied glitter to the paint as it was drying. After they were dry, they made them three dimensional by cutting a notch in the middle of each pair of ornaments and fitting the pair together. Lastly, they hung them with ribbon from a local craft store.

Excluding the lighting, which they already owned, this project cost about $800.

Projection Lattice A Sign: It's Jesus

3 responses to “Throwback: Cardboard Ornaments”

  1. Jason Caldwell says:

    Love the fabric. I am looking for some draping fabric myself for our upcoming Easter design. What kind is that, and rough cost?

  2. Mark Branson says:

    Beautiful! Would you send templates? Thank you

  3. Janie says:

    Beautiful, would you send your ornament templates, I’d love to do this for Christmas 🩷

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