Stage Designs

What’s In Your Book?

Lori Biddle from Crossroads Community Church in Mansfield, Ohio brings us this great stage and even cooler lobby display.

From Lori: I saw a letter sculpture on CSDI and description of how they cut out the styrofoam letters, so I started with that concept and added to it.

Our Title was: The Last Word

We chose a ‘book’ design as our visual idea. We included a printed book-marker in the programs with a blank to write their final word on it. Our pastor taught about how Jesus’ death and resurrection allows our stories to be re-written. We are new in Christ, when the world thought Jesus death was the Last word, the Father knew he would rise again!

Our artist group cut the styrofoam letters out using hot knives and a jig saw. Next I painted the words the Pastor was going to focus on yellow so they would stand out from the white styrofoam.

We used Power Guard “ultimate” to connect the letters. This worked well, but I did end up having to glue the two sides to a board in order to stand it up because we made it so tall.

One of the artists made a large cardboard book that we suspended from the lobby ceiling, the pages were made using the largest roll of plastic table-covering I could find, and we connected it to the book using mostly white duct tape. We then laser cut letters from poster board in varying sizes and attached them to fish-line, this created the illusion of letters/words spilling from the pages of the book forming the sculpture below. We attached the letter to the line with a drop of clear glue and then put a tape dot over each one and they stayed on the lines pretty well. However, the lines had to be carried one at a time or they tangled very easily! The letter lines were VERY time intensive!

I also asked for book donations and I stacked books at various locations on the stage and under the 2 side screens. I placed little battery operated candle/lights on each stack of books.

We then created a large book on stage using a frame of 2X4’s and stapled cardboard to the front which I had painted white. We then hit the book during worship with whatever EP colors were being used, and lit it like parchment paper when the pastor took the stage. We then brought up the theme ‘words’ that we featured in our lobby on the book when the pastor mentioned them. That allowed us to keep the pastor on live iMAG on the actual screens while he taught.

Costs:
4 sheets of styrofoam = $80
Poster-board = $6
Paint – $8
Plastic – $7.99
tape dots – $5
Powerguard – $8
Cardboard – $25

Hanging Pipes Crimson Cross

4 responses to “What’s In Your Book?”

  1. Glendale says:

    Nice concept and execution!

  2. Chris Nicholson says:

    Hey that lobby design is amazing! And using projection to get that look on the “book” in the sanctuary is a great way to make something simple look expensive and fancy. And obviously it’s much more flexible that way.
    Quick Questions: What is Power Guard and could you put a link for it in your response to this? Google was not helping me. The closest thing I could find was Loctite Power GRAB. Thanks.

  3. Lori Biddle says:

    Thank you! Already looking for this Christmas – I feel behind! Never ends, I guess that’s a really great thing!

  4. Lori Biddle says:

    Oh brother – don’t tell me I didn’t list the title of the glue product correctly! I’m not in today – I’ll try to remember but what you’re calling it sure sounds right. I’ll let you know!

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