Stained Blocks

Angela Walker from Guymon Nazarene Church in Guymon, OK brings us this Christmas design.

From Angela: We were inspired by the arched stained glass design by Drew Hoopingarner and the team at Southport Presbyterian Church. We do something each advent to emphasize the themes & decided to go with stained glass pieces with the words featured. Materials were 4′ x 8′ sheets of black Coroplast and tissue paper (wrapping paper from the Dollar Tree). We needed something we could do fairly quickly and inexpensively. We decided to emulate the stained glass in our sanctuary, which is a design using squares & rectangles.

I laid out the design in I-Studio, then used 1″ painters’ tape to create the grid. Post-it notes coded the squares and rectangles, and utility knives were used to cut the Coroplast. [A self-healing cutting mat and quilting rulers helped us keep straight lines] Words were free-handed onto paper, then laid out backward on the grid. Cutting out the rounded parts of the words was the hardest part. We did that after the first one when it took 20 minutes to clean off all the tape (someone suggested putting the word on the back so we didn’t have to pull off the tape! Smart!). Tissue paper was cut to size and attached with Scotch tape and glue dots.

The finished pieces were hung with fishing wire. The two side pieces in front of the white walls are hung from the bottom of the soffit. The two that are on the back walls needed support to keep from bowing, so we attached dowel rods to the top to keep the pieces straight. They are uplit with simple multi-color Par floor lights.

When we finished all 4 pieces, the perfectionist in me noticed that we have one panel whose word started one line lower in the grid.

We spent about $120 on the Coroplast, and about $40 on tissue paper, adhesives, and utility knives. In all, about 10 people were involved over the course of 4 days in the process. I’d estimate 80 hours total.