This week I decided to do a throwback set design post to a set we created back at the beginning of 2014. We implemented a lot of set designs before I started blogging that I’m (slowly) working on writing about. This set design was originally designed to go along with one of the 252 Basics themes on Endurance, but it is such a versatile set design. You could use this concept for teaching on being a light in the darkness, Jesus is the light of the world, creativity, imagination, and I’m sure there are other ideas that would fit this set design as well. It’s clean, simple and has a huge wow factor with the kids, leaders and parents.
We used primarily light bulbs and light bulb decorations for this set, but you will also see some gears. At 
this time we had a wheel anchored to one of the side trussing pieces so we mostly decorated our left stage trussing piece. We created the large colored light bulbs and the light bulbs that spell out endurance in photoshop using a free stock image of a light bulb. You could do something similar in Canva, and it’s free and user-friendly. If you are in need of cool graphics and images that you can customize yourself, but don’t have the expertise, you have to get a free account on Canva. There are lots of FREE options to choose from, and even more options that only cost $1. I have made sign-up sheets, blog images, craft sheets, activity pages, and more in Canva, and I have no graphic design experience. Now, back to the set design. Once my light bulb images were all created, I printed them out on cardstock and cut them out. I attached the light bulbs to some thin foam using hot glue, and cut the foam to fit the shapes 
using an x-acto knife. You could use cardboard here and it would actually work better, or if you have a hot knife to cut through the foam go with that option. I hadn’t yet discovered the awesomeness of cardboard sheets when I put this set design together. We used a little black stand that was actually the bottom of a table to display a K’nex set we put together. We decorated the stand with some “gears” we created using some craft foam sheets. Look for the 11×17 or 12×18 foam sheets to make bigger gears. We used more gears and light bulbs to decorate a “Prayer PC” that we left on the wall for a few months. The kids were encouraged to add their prayers to the Prayer PC each week using sticky notes. As you can see in the picture, the kids responded really well to the Prayer PC, and it gave our leaders ideas on what to pray about for our kids.
I saved the best part of this set design for last. This part of the set could cost you some money, or not, 
depending on what you have on hand. We bought ten light pendant cords from ikea like this one to hang light bulbs from our front trussing. We wanted our hanging lights to look eclectic, not orderly. We bought five black and five white pendant cords to help with this. For the light bulbs, we wanted each light bulb to be unique. We used some light bulbs we already had around the church, and bought a few more at Home Depot and Walmart. Again, you can go as expensive or budget-friendly as you like for this. Use what you have, and don’t stress about it. We also used some Ikea floor lamps that had broken shades on the back edges of our stage. When we removed the broken shades they looked pretty nifty. Use whatever lamps, lightbulbs, and light fixtures you can find around your church/house for this fun and unique set. Don’t forget that you can always reach out to the families in your church for set design items.