EmailGroup Publishing’s PandaMania Easy VBS is truly easy with this years set design. Bruce Berry went out of his way to make it simple and affordable for churches to have awesome decorations on a budget that still offers huge visual impact. Our church built the set last weekend, just to show how quick and easy it could be to put together. We spent 15 hours building and about an hour or two shopping and gathering supplies. There were about 132 man hours involved. Watch our PandaMania decorations video below.
Group has also posted a handful of VBS decorating videos. Learn more about this VBS curriculum at Group’s official website. Want to see inside a PandaMania VBS? Click here to watch my preview video from their test church.
We took Group’s suggestion and scheduled a “set building and decorating” event. We held it on a Friday evening and Saturday. We emptied out the auditorium and covered the carpet with plastic, gathered our supplies, and sent our the invitation to come and join us! Many new people in the church came to help, giving us a chance to get to know them, and for them to get to know us. We involved many of the men in our congregation, many who don’t feel there is a place for them to serve, but this fit the bill — power tools and pizza. If you haven’t tried this approach, I recommend you give it a whirl and create a wonderful relational event while building the set!
In advance, I took a look at the Decorating Places DVD, and visited decoratingplaces.com to print out the step-by-step instructions for each item that needed to be built.
We had a member of the church who worked at a carpet store deliver us carpet tube of all shapes and sizes over the last few month. This was a huge help. Most carpet stores will gladly give you their left over rolls. We did find that if the plastic cap in the end was left on, it helped the tube stand up. It also allowed us to just directly screw them onto the bases and not have to use the PVC phalanges. This saved both time and money. We also were able to have our local paint store mix “oops” paint to look similar to the colors suggested by Group. We paid less than $15.00 for paint. When we made our supply list and ran to the hardware store the whole trip including loading and unloading took less than an hour.
We started Friday, and painted left over foam core from High Seas. We decided that even if it wasn’t exactly as Group had suggested, it would work to use as “backing” for the pandas. This again saved money and allowed us to recycle last year’s materials. We also made the frames and painted them green. We felt the bare wood didn’t add to the “professional” look and it only took about a half hour to paint them and then, we covered them in the plastic. Unfortunately, we didn’t have “frosted” plastic at our hardware store, so ours was more see through. So, we needed to paint the carpet tube behind the frames to look like bamboo. This worked well and they look beautiful. Lots of carpet tubes were used and both covered them with the bamboo wrap you can purchase and we painted a few. Both looked great.
We built our bridge out of wood so it could be walked on. This took a little more time, but is worth it for us, as it allows access to the stage.
We began Saturday, by creating the bamboo stands. We again painted these green as they could be seen through the plastic. Now it was time to begin setting the stage. The bamboo backdrop is gorgeous, especially if you can light it from behind. It was a great help not to paint a huge backdrop this year. It took about ten minutes to hang it and was actually less expensive than the foam core sea we painted last year for High Seas. The shadow boxes went up next-quick and without a hitch. We put the bamboo on the bases and called a couple of audibles here. First, we used the left over upholstery cotton cording and sheets (from the High Seas rigging) and dyed it green to wrap around the tubes to create the notches. This kept us from buying green craft paper. We also used green construction paper instead of the foam sheets for the leaves. It looked equivalent, and cost less.
Then the detail work began, adding flowers, pandas, the diving board, pools, etc. This took a little time, but the look was worth it. We added stuffed pandas, that we have been collecting from thrift shops, and the look was complete.
Group made it “easy” in design, in materials, in cost, and in resources available. The bamboo backdrop is worth every penny as it is beautiful and functional. It is currently being used as a backdrop for “creation” series. The pandas were tedious to cut out but, it was great not to have to use the overhead to trace each one and paint them. The bamboo wrap was easy to use and pretty. It was just as easy to paint and those looked great too. My only regret is that the PandaMania sign was not included in the Panda Pack. This would have been a huge bonus.
All in all, Group really made decorating very easy, affordable and fun, while still offering a high impact, sensory rich, backdrop for VBS!
Related posts:
- PandaMania Decorating Ideas for VBS
- PandaMania VBS Music Video Samples
- VBS Curriculum Review: Group’s PandaMania
- How To Make Giant Silly Bands Decorations
- Fall Sunday School Decorations (or Kids Church)
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