Hi,
My friend and I just finished a week of mural painting.  We painted some things with themes, and other things without themes.

 

We painted a biblical town square in the commom area. There is a temple and Lydia's tent (purple of course), some nondescript buildings, and a well. I'm making a semi-circle "well" to put up against the painting for a 3-D effect. I'm also going to put a bucket of water in it... it will be our offering well.

 

All the doors are painted to look like old wooden doors or are a continuation of scenery.

 

The janitor's closet door is "the potters house". Outside that "house" are a stool, a table with a pot and some broken pottery pieces. Down the short hall is another block building. One long hallway wall is desert and rocks with a distant ocean. There are double doors at the end of that hall. We painted iron gates on those, it looks like you are looking into a garden. On the reverse side of those doors are "city gates" with a "wood" welcome sign.

 

There are a lot of trees throughout.

 

Our other hallway will not have the village theme, it is kind of out of the way. In that hall I painted an Old Testament timeline (looks like a gameboard) and a map. The difference from Monday til now is amazing! And to be honest, the cement block pattern made it very easy to make buildings.

 

I also painted in our skills and games room. There is a bookshelf with all the books of the bible, the 10 Commandments, a listing of the Disciples and a diagram of Solomon's temple. I didn't paint anything in out art and media room, but there is a bulletin board that will be a backdrop for our "tv broadcasts".

 

The drama room has a nighttime skyline on one wall, and the rest of the scenery will be on bedsheets. Rotation comes to our Wednesday night program this week and to Sunday School as soon as the former curriculum runs out in March. 

 

Once we were done, everyone thought it was great.

 

Cheryl

We completely re-painted all our rooms, and have found that instead of being "locked into" themes and uses, people have really appreciated the new environment.

 

We mainly used biblical themes for our rooms ---with a couple of exceptions, so the rooms work well for many programs.

 

For instance, in Lent we did a Journey to Jerusalem and re-enacted the events of Holy Week in the various rooms. During Advent we photographed the Christmas story using a couple of the rooms as backdrops. The key is to let them see the difference the transformation can make.

We used latex satin gloss paint for most of our murals - some on cement block, and others on drywall. They can easily be painted over when and if necessary.

 

Paint is not nearly as permanent as some committees would have us believe!

I think Cindy has the key to convincing people about painting - it's not that permanent! So, approach your nay-sayers with a deal: if the paint job is unacceptable after 6 months (time to get used to it) you will promise to paint over it in the most esquisite white paint available. Now, which idea do you prefer - the country scene or the temple scene?

I guarantee you won't be painting over it or I will come and help with the white job!

Then get other people in the congregation caught up in the plan and get lots of people involved in the job - its contagious! There is safety in numbers. I held a couple of info meetings, went to every adult SS class and women's meeting to share the vision - take puppets and popcorn and art supplies to get across the idea.

Have pictures of other churches to show what others have done. I gave a different church group a room to "do" with a plan and a budget. In this way, we got much more done than the budget would have allowed through generous donations.

Make sure the job is supervised and neat!

At kick off, have a big splashy event (we had a congregation hot dog/ice-cream lunch after worship) and invited everyone to a tour with hostesses in each room. Everyone LOVED the change. It was exciting. You would have to be a party pooper to object when everyone is ooohing. The older folk especially thought it wonderful for the children.

Just some ideas.... Catherine

We have painted our murals on movable flats for two reasons:

 

1)  We are currently contemplating a move to another building.

2)  We like the idea of being able to change up our rooms.

 

Normally the murals are left up where we put them but we have built in flexibility for all the time that it takes to do the murals.

 

We have even moved some of our murals to the sanctuary to be used in plays and placed them on a huge 12 foot by 8 foot high colapsible profesional display.

 

I agree with painting walls vividly and we have done some great faux finishes but as for actual murals... I say keep the flexibility and watch how many ways you can use them.

We have yet to get our church board to allow us to paint on the walls, but we used the Dow blue styrofoam insulation sheets to paint on for our Bible "mural" backgrounds.

 

We used the 3/4 inch boards so we would have some support. The sheets are grooved on one edge, so they fit together.

 

If you have eight foot ceilings, the boards will fit in nicely. We went to the dollar store and used acrylic paints. We used oblong sponges to give a brick effect, using two different color paints.