Andy's VBS Adventures - andysvbs

Pastor Aaron with a 10 foot gator.  He was quite a fighter until he found himself in the submission hold.  Oh, and such a pretty creature up close!

Pastor Aaron with the 5 footer tease that he brought out before the big guy hit the stage.

Close up of the big tree's trunk base and surroundings.

Close up of the small tree with surround vegetation.

End view of the shack.

The finished shack.

The decorated stage; wide open and ready for a couple dozen praise team dancers!

Stage with the "gator crate" covered up and waiting for the reveal.

The left side of the stage.

The right side of the stage.

This is a stump that is featured in the mid-ground vegetation.  It is 3 pieces of foam; carved and painted.

Finally!  The trees are painted and ready for the stage.  The base coat was darker than I wanted, but I think it turned out ok.  The moss really pops on them and gives them character!  Can't wait to get them on site and branched up.

Here is the shortest of the three trees.  With the top branch, it will stand about 15 feet.  You can also see the middle tree in progress behind it.  It will top about between 17 and 18 feet tall.  I cut in the bases for where the branches will join the tree but have decided to wait and add the branches once the trees are on stage, primarily for transportation.

Here is a picture of the 20 foot tree.  I had to take it in three sections as I couldn't get far enough away from it to get it all in.  After some consideration, I think I'm going to cut off a couple feet and add one more branch.  I think once it gets a coat of paint, some highlights and spanish moss, it will look as much like a tree as it needs to.

Concentric trunk outlines conserve as much foam as possible.

4 or 5 layers of concentric trunk outlines stacks up to give a general trunk shape.

Layers smoothed out with a little hot knife sculpting and some work with an old iron.

Three bases ready for the rest of the trunk and some paint.

Modified from the video, these are my tree bases.  I used 3/4" MDF (heavy chipboard) that is actually cut into the foot print of the tree trunk.  Six of these will be PVC and brown paper.  The other five will be PVC and foam.  The three biggest ones get a foot of concrete infill in them as well.

7/16 OSB plywood cut out that will serve as the mid-ground vegetation base.  A coat of dark green paint and multiple layers of greenery, foam stumps, cattails, roots, moss and sticks should make it look just right.  This is one of six... but you get the idea.

Shack with door built, hung and trimed.  Now shack goes on hold until paint week where it will get some weathering and mold.

Front of the shack without the door trim.  Ran out of time tonight but it will be a real quick add tomorrow.  Turned out exactly how I pictured it and only took a couple hours.  I'm very please.  With the rusty tin roof and front porch, I think it's going to work perfectly for us.

End of the shack with glass in and window trim on.  Still haven't decided if I'm going to divide the windows up into multiple panes visually.  Very pleased with the process so far.

The end of the shack.  I framed it up with studs, skinned it with 1/8" wood planeling, alternated to give it a rough look.  9'-6" tall and 8' wide.

Cheap cattails.  Reeds with tapered paper towels taped on.  A little spray paint and they'll be good to go.

My daughter and I taking a short break during the madness to pose in front of the photo op.  The thing was massive and heavy and as much of a joy as it was a pain to create.  The kids loved it!

My welcome sign was 10 foot tall and 8 foot wide and was almost as popular for picture taking as the photo op.  It is made of PVC tubing and styrofoam sheets.  Carving out the letters of the sign was brutal but totally worth it!

Close up of the sign.  Used metal hardware, rope, PVC and foam.  You can see a little of the texture in the relief of the sign.  It was rough but worth it!

The stage was simple: split rail fencing with some wheels, barrels and rope.  The background screens, lighting and praise team finished it out just fine.

Beach Blast 09 Stage

The Beach Blast chair and sandcastle...

The Beach Blast sign.

Styrofoam sand castle for the stage.  It is made out of 2 inch foam, stacked and then carved.  Cutting all the blocking hid the joints very well so that you can hardly tell it isn't one solid block.  Spray painted with sand colored fleck stone.

This is a 4' x 8' foam-centered sand scupture that goes on stage along with my other creations each year.

We had a race themed children's camp a few years ago where I built a full-sized car and needed some appropriate sponsers.  So, I spoofed some recognizable logos.

I need about 200 cattails, so they need to be as cheap as possible.  My solution: reeds and paper towels.  The reeds were picked up at Hobby Lobby for 50% off.  I probably paid less than 10 cents a stick for them.  The paper towels are the half sheet kinds (which are about 6 inches).  Using a 3 inch strip of masking tape to attach the first paper towel, I wrap it around and use a little inch piece to hold it in place.  The second paper towel gets a slight taper - about 3/4" of an inch out and back to the edge - and then it is taped down, rolled up and secured with a 5 inch long piece of tape.  Once they are painted a nice, flat brown, they should look great.  Because they are 20 or 30 feet away from the kiddos, the texture isn't that big of a deal.  Total spent for roughly 200 cattails is about $20.

A new campus, another VBS to add to the books.  Moving to one of our satelite campuses this year, I was given a much different stage and an exciting opportunity to sort of start from scratch.  So, this year is much simpler but not an less fun.  The first day was great and I'm looking forward to the next 4 days as we lead a couple hundred of the coolest kids on a High Seas Expedition... LET'S GO!!!

Feel free to look at the pictures I've posted of the stage this year.  More details to come later in the week.

First day went great!  The stage looked great.  Between the set, the background panels and the lighting, it looked fantastic.  Here is a run though of some of the details of the set.

Shack - 2 x 4 frame with the thin panels.  I topped it off with some rusty scrap metal.  The laterns are regular liquid fuel laterns with the wick and it's support removed and landscape lighting rigged.  Pretty nice looking effect.

Trees - PVC inside with styrofoam exterior.  Real branches attached and then draped with spanish moss.

Mid-ground Vegetation - 3/8" OSB plywood with a blochy green coat of paint.  Some painted foam pieces with hundreds of artificial plants poked in and several pieces of greenery stapled to the plywood.

It was a long, exhausting process, but the kids and leaders loved it and that's all that matters!  Now I wait till Friday when I get to demo it all...

Well, here it is the next to last day of construction and I'm feeling pretty good about what has to be done.  I usually get off work early on Fridays and will be taking advantage of that fact to knock a ton out today.  I'll be painting the mid-ground stuff and cutting out some foam for a little bit of ground that will be adding depth to the flat panels.  I'll also pick up my paint for the trees and get started on the base coat.  At some point I'll have to pull off of Croc Dock to work on my bases for my tiki torches for Beach Blast.  I need the concrete to set up over night so I can paint the sand texture on them tomorrow.  Hopefully by the end of the day I'll have several pictures to post of the progress.

Only three days left to build and paint before set up on Sunday.  I have 4 trees to make and some basic painting to do.  Today will be focused on getting all of the foam cut for the trees and hopefully getting them put together.  I will have some rough construction stuff to do on set-up day (porch and dock) but pretty much the only thing I'll have to worry about after today is painting and greenery.

As a follow up, my three trees are complete and awaiting paint.  I still have to make Tessa's trees, but as they are much smaller, I'm hoping it will only be a few more hours worth of work.  Cleaned up a bit as the foam pieces on the ground were getting in the way.  Overall a good evening of work!

I knew it was going to be hard and slow.  Whew!  Well, regardless, I have a 20+ foot tall tree in the shop.  I must be doing something right because the first thing out of my dad's mouth when I walked into the office this morning was "you're crazy".  Unlike the bottom, the top half of the tree is solid rings of foam with holes cut for the PVC to run through.  This helps with the rigidity as much as anything.  The base is more than enough to support the weight of the trunk and branches.  Speaking of the branches, I blew off the original idea of "T" joints and just drilled holes directly into the PVC and ran the branches in, securing it in place with a couple drywall screws from the other side.

One down... four to go.

However, before I go, two notes:  this tree is going to get a little modification as I'll probably going to cut 2 feet off of the upper trunk and add an additional branch.  And the next four trees... yeah, I'm pretty sure they're going to come in a little shorter than originally planned.  I'm down to four days to finish all of my building and painting and I can't justify one tree a day.

Morning planning - The detail for the trees are starting to take shape.  Will be getting the balance of the PVC this afternoon and will probably make a trip to the local park to see if I can find some dead branches that are in good shape and light enough for my trees.  Also need to add concrete to the existing bases now that the glue is dry and cut and form the bases for the two smaller trees that are heading to the Firewheel campus.  Overall a pretty hectic looking evening, especially considering I won't be able to get started until after 5:00.  I'll post the results late tonight, hopefully with some more pictures.

Afternoon reality - Well, there is nothing like having plans so that they can get turned completely on their ear.  I did end up getting to the park and getting branches.  I'm pretty sure I'll have to go back, but what I got should get me through the vast majority of what needs to go on.  But that is pretty much all I got done that was planned.  My wife had plans of her own and so I had my girls.  While they could have come up to the office while I worked, I just didn't think it was fair to bore them that way, so I decided to take a "break" from the big stuff and work on some small, indoor, air conditioned stuff.  I bought some sprigs of onion grass from Dollar Tree the other day and had to perform a little surgery on them.  So, I unwrapped them, divided them into 10 sections and rewrapped.  So, 15 large sprigs is now 150 small sprigs that will go all over the mid-ground.  6 hours later, off to bed with my hands cramping.  Good times!!!

Morning - Picked up my rusty, tin roof metal and cut it down to the right size.  Finished cutting all of my 2 x 4 support and structure.  Cut the bases for the cypress trees.  The gal who is decorating the hallways and entry area wanted 6 trees and is doing the PVC center with brown paper.  I'm making 3 for the stage (and 2 for Tessa at our Firewheel campus) that will be the stacked foam.  I'll be attaching the PVC footings this afternoon.  However, my first casualty slowed down my morning progress as my scroll saw broke as I was cutting my OSB plywood.  I took it apart to see what the damage was going to be.  The result was not good.  I might be able to replace the part from the manufacturer, but not in the next few hours.  So, a quick trip to Sears and I've got myself a new and improved scroll saw.  Back to work.  (I'll post pics this afternoon of everything I get cut.

Afternoon - New scroll saw works great and I cut the OSB into shape in no time.  Attached the MDF bases to the PVC bases and cleaned up most of the sawdust.  Hopefully the rest of it will settle over night and I'll finish cleaning it tomorrow.  Right now, heading home to clean up and head to Saturday night church at LP to teach my wild 4th graders!

Today should be the last day of saws, cutting and sawdust.  I'll be cutting the bases for my cypress trees out of 3/4" high density particle board (heavy stuff) and 6 panels of OBS playwood that will serve as my mid-ground vegetation line.  We have screens in place to give us a background but it needs something green and dimensional to blend it all in.  The plywood will get painted green and leafy before getting multiple layers of greenery stapled to it.  Great news!  I had a resource for rusted tin roof material and won't need to use foam.  That's three more sheets that I get to play with!  Yea!!!!  Once all the sawdust is swept up and cleared out, then I'll start working on the base structure for the trees (PVC) and start cutting foam.  The plan right now is to get everything cut and built over the weekend and cleared and cleaned for a week of painting, painting and more painting.  Pictures to follow...

Well, my goals fell a little short as my wife and kiddos talked me into taking off early and heading out for a little dinner and then to the park to hunt for lightning bugs.  I did get the door for the shack done.  The rest will have to wait till tomorrow.  Hopefully I can get all of the cutting done and get everything cleaned up tomorrow.  I'm a little ahead of schedule, so it's not that big of a deal.