Homemade Stage Backdrop

This sucker cost me $20 to make.  Nice.

Homemade Stage Backdrop

You will need: 

Acrylic craft paint (Dollarama)

Paintbrushes in various sizes (Dollarama)

Plastic drop cloth (Dollarama)

Hammer and nails (Dollarama)

Fabric pins (Dollarama)

Small bowls for paint colours (Dollarama... notice a theme?)
Used bed sheet (Salvation Army)

Jar of water to dip brushes in

A floor or yard
A place to dry the sheet once it's been painted

An upright fabric divider (I'm borrowing the church's divider)

Advance preparation:

1. Find a spot that has lots of room for you to spread out in.  I used the lot beside my apartment building, because it is spacious, empty, okay to get paint on, and the weather was really nice.

2. Spread the drop cloth on the ground.  Weigh the corners down with heavy objects.  After preparing the sheet, I nailed both the sheet and the drop cloth to the ground.  The dirt was very hard and I used long nails.  

The first time I painted a sheet, I laid it directly on the ground, and a bunch of dirt stuck to the wet paint as it dried.  I had to scrape it off afterward.  Always use a drop cloth underneath.  Preferably plastic, because it's slippery and the sheet will peel right off.

Instructions:

1. Find a simple picture on the internet.  Simple, because the backdrop is supposed to enhance the action on the stage, not compete with it.  That's why I chose strong colors and simplified my image.

Here was the one I chose:

I didn't paint any of the rocks on the ground, because I wanted to keep the picture very simple.

2. Cut or tear your sheet into the right size.

3. Sketch the picture onto the sheet with a pen or delicate marker before painting.  This way, you know that you will be satisfied with the basic shapes you will be working with.  It's a pain in the butt to work really hard on the details of an object, and then realize half-way through that the proportion is totally wrong because you didn't sketch it out first.

3. Paint the big blocks of colour first.  Add details second.  One coat of paint is enough.

4. Hang to dry.  Because the fabric absorbs the paint like crazy, and I hung my sheet outside to dry in the heat and the breeze, it took about an hour to dry completely.  Leave it out longer to be on the safe side.

Also, something awesome about this project is that the paint stiffens the sheet.  Once you are ready to hang your sheet, it will stand up nearly on its own, making it super easy to hang!

5. If you are using a fabric divider, like I did, to hang your sheet, just stick a few fabric pins into the sheet and the divider, pointing down.  These will not budge!

All done!

Run time: shopping for supplies and making the project will run you about 5 hours from start to finish.  But you can hang on to this resource for years!