Thirty-five

Last week was Christian Life Fellowship's 35th anniversary, and I was asked to help with a few displays of photos to celebrate the rich history of this great church family. The challenge: Create four display tables - two on each end of the Performing Arts Center in Wisconsin Rapids. 

Here is the process I used to create the displays:

Step 1: Prayed with my friend Julie for a great way to do this with little or no money! Thanks to in-house printing and our free roll of black paper, we were able to do this entire project for $55!

Step 2: Went on a hunt around the church for things that would make an interesting "framework" for the photo display. I went out to the garage and gathered some old wooden boxes from past musical events, grabbed a couple leather cubes for seating from the children's wing, spied two cardboard barrels - one in the garage and another in a storage room, borrowed two silver cylinder waste cans, and two half-rounds.

I also snagged four black tablecloths and headed to a back room to start playing with then pieces. One table would be free-standing, and one would be against a wall.   I also called my friend, Sue, who has literally over a hundred fabulous unique candle holders with electric candles that she was willing to lend me.

Step 3: Realized what a large task I had gotten myself into, and enlisted the help of a few creative friends - thanks Kristi and Karen! We took measurements and Karen curt large black paper to cover the cylinders.

Step 4: I looked through hundreds of photos and choose a variety to illustrate many of the people and events over the years. Made them black and white, guessed at some helpful sizes to fit our boxes and cylinders, and asked Pam to send them through the printer. 

Step 5: I trimmed photos and Kristi begin arranging them for the cylinders. Using LOTS of double-sided tape we secured the photos for all of our cylinders on large sheets of black paper on the floor. When complete, we taped the large black paper filled with photos onto the cylinders. 

Then we numbered the large photos for the wooden boxes and cubes. We decided to wait to attach them until we set up at the PAC on Saturday night. We rolled lots of pieces of gaff tape to attach them to the boxes when they were all in place.

Voila! Here's one display Saturday night at the PAC:

We decided to set the whole display up at church for a couple weeks to let people enjoy the display for a few more weeks.. Here's the display back at church: