If youve been following this column at all, you know that I am very interestedand sometimes successfulin setting aside my artists ego every now and then to get other people involved in the creation of a worship visual. As hard as it is sometimes to work with a group of people with varying opinions, the result is almost always worth the extra effort. (And from what I read in your e-mails, some of you are doing way too much of the work yourselves.) For this cooperative project, why not recruit a group who are easy to work with: kids?
Clip-Art Start
Clip art is often a good place to start saving time. This art is from Clip Art for Year A (B and C also available), published by Liturgy Training Publications (800-933-1800 or www.ltp.org). Clip art often looks like clip art because it is left as it was found: floating on a background of pure white. As you can see, we fixed that by adding color and . . . kids.
Kids and Paint
- Project and trace the artwork on a piece of plywood as wide as you can handle in your worship space. Plywood comes in 4' x 8' sheets, so if you are going larger than that, Id suggest that you join the halves of the circle with hinges so you can fold it for storage.
- One of the things that makes this design interesting, I think, is that the color in the background is much stronger than the foreground. To enhance this effect, paint the black shapes yourself, before getting the young ones involved.
- Now things get interesting. Find one or two other willing adults for crowd control and put out a general invitation to the first- or second-graders in your congregation to join you on a Saturday morning. Ask them to take a paint shirt, but dont tell themor their parentstoo much else. With the children watching, put a dab of the desired color in the middle of a non-black area and ask them to fill in the rest of the shape. Dont be too fussykids ownership of their work is important.
Once complete, hang as is or against a background of dark fabric. Guaranteed, the kids who were a part of the project will feel they contributed to worship that Sunday.
Download
Download the 2pg/490k pattern and corresponding bulletin cover.