Christmas Designs

Frosty Windows

Greg Saffles at Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, TN brings us this Christmas goodness. (originally posted March 2011)

The idea was to create an outdoor winter scene – hence the white trees outside of the windows. The design itself was fairly simple – they went out to some woods behind the church, cut down a few moderately sized trees, and painted them white with a Wagner power sprayer. Then they took each tree and supported it using cement in a one-gallon paint bucket. The windows were hung from one another using airline cable and were arranged in a curve to make the stage appear smaller. To complete the winter effect on the windows, they took some cheap fake snow from Walmart and frosted the bottoms of them. The trees were lit using Source 4 PAR cans and the windows with Source 4 Ellipsoidals. A general blue/purple wash was also created to give the appearance of a “cooler” atmosphere.

Thumbprint Tree's Company

18 responses to “Frosty Windows”

  1. Steven Hall says:

    Greg, This is absolutely beautiful! Great job. Very clean and elegant. Keep up the great work for the kingdom.

  2. Jon Morris says:

    Where did the windows and how much did they run per window?

    Thanks

    • Greg Saffles says:

      Hey Jon – We actually borrowed the windows, but I’ve seen the same thing at a salvage yard here in Nashville. Couldn’t tell you for sure on the price, but I wouldn’t imagine them being more than $10-$20/window. In theory, it could be a pretty cheap set!

  3. Jill Bryant says:

    Love this. We just might use the idea for your youth stage. Great Idea!

  4. Dakota says:

    Hey Greg.

  5. John says:

    Hey, we built this exact set (pretty much) and are going to be finished with it after this weekend (Jan. 28-29). Does anyone want our windows for re-creating this set at your church? You would probably need to come pick them up… I believe we have 28 windows. We are located just outside of Washington D.C. in Fairfax, VA. We need to get rid of them next week. Let me know ASAP. Thanks, -john

    • Sherry Naron says:

      Hi John,
      I am thinking of creating this set for Christmas this year. Where did you find the windows – i love the 6 panes but having a hard time finding them on an initial search on the internet…

      Thans,
      Sherry

      • John says:

        We initially looked at Habitat For Humanity ReStore, but didn’t find much there. We found some of them from a guy who lived along a highway and collected windows (they were all over his lawn). And we got the rest on Craigslist.

  6. Robert says:

    Hey Greg,

    Are these real trees, fake? Where did you get them?

    • Greg Saffles says:

      Hey Robert – the trees are all real and came from some woods behind our church. Since it was winter at the time, there weren’t any leaves and so it was just a matter of finding the ones we thought would look the best and fill in the stage well. Then we painted them white and cemented them in the buckets!

  7. Dakota says:

    Hi Greg.

  8. David House says:

    By chance you guys still got the windows? We are in so jersey and want to do this set.

  9. Madison says:

    Hey. I’m building set design for a play. Can you tell me how you made the windows look frosted? The scene is the ice age and we want to make the windows look as realistic as possible.
    Thanks

    • Greg Saffles says:

      Hey Madison, it was super simple – we just used some of that fake window frost/snow stuff from Wal-Mart. It took a bunch of cans of it, but it worked!

  10. GDale says:

    Looks great!

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