Shipwrecked Decorating Spaces: Sanctuary

Our church sanctuary houses the opening and closing every evening of VBS.  The stage is our main VBS set and the kids are assigned to pews by their crews.  We typically spend the most time and energy on the stage decorations since they’re the main set that kids will see several times each night.  Our sanctuary also houses the bible verse station.  I’ll share those photos in another post!  Some of the decorations used in our sanctuary were given to us by a couple of other churches, while we made or re-purposed the rest of it.  Our VBS is typically the first or second full week of June, so there aren’t many programs before us.  We were so blessed this year to receive decor from the two other churches.  In turn, we were able to pass on decor to 3+ other church Shipwrecked VBS programs!

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Our church has now finished Shipwrecked VBS!  It was an awesome week of island adventures and sweet moments with our kiddos and adults.  This is the first of several posts where I’m going to share decorating photos from each of our Vacation Bible School spaces (watch for future posts of our other areas).  Please feel free to add your ideas in the comments below!  I’ll add links in this post for the tutorials and/or supplies.  Let me know if you have any further questions about supplies or projects – I’m happy to give more details on anything!

STAGE

Our stage had several focal points. This is the view from the back of the sanctuary.

Anchor: cut from styrofoam sheet and painted.  Barrels: blue plastic barrels painted with brown, black and white paint.

Island hut: 3 pallet walls (made last year and re-used), pool noodle life preserver, large pylon (cardboard boxes covered with wood print paper and wrapped in rope), old suitcase (re-used from another year).

Wooden crates, straw hat, palm tree (made from carpet tube covered in paper lunch bags – top is a paper umbrella covered in palm leaves cut from green paper), pool noodle life preserver, bible point “crates” (cardboard boxes covered with wood print contact paper, painted with brown edges, then daily bible points added with black paint), shipwreck (cut a large cardboard sheet from another year, covered with wood print paper-attached with clear packing tape).  The shipwreck hid our piano (I’m all about double-duty decor)!

Waterfall area: waterfall (made from cardboard boxes, brown paper, silver foil wrapping paper, blue cellophane, clear packing tape, staple gun), trees (pulled from church storage and placed around the stage as fillers).  I’m going to  write a separate post with a tutorial and video for the waterfall!

PEWS

Shipwrecked crew signs (templates printed on bright paper, laminated, then attached to pews using painter’s tape rolls) and crew bags were in each crew’s area (here’s a list of what’s in our crew bags).

BACK OF SANCTUARY

This is the back of the sanctuary (what kids see as they get ready to leave the sanctuary and head to their stations).  This area had another large barrel (just like the ones on stage), pool noodle life preserver, hollow wooden boxes, bible point poster.

This is the opposite side of the rear doors of the sanctuary.  We had two large wooden spools, two treasure chests (styrofoam coolers painted gold, then one lid painted pink and one blue) and another daily bible point poster.  The rest of the bible point posters were near the stage up front.

As you left the sanctuary, you could walk through a doorway with grass skirts hung over it.  The kids always enjoy getting to walk through something, whether it’s a tunnel or just some decorations in the doorway.  (We also leave one doorway clear for elderly or disabled.)

That’s the end of our sanctuary decor!  Stay tuned for photos from more areas of our Shipwrecked VBS program!

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