Marquee Light Sign DIY

I’m not much of a decorator around the house. We haven’t put up a Christmas tree in about 9 years because we spend the holidays with my parents and my mom loves putting up trees (she use to have 3). I wanted to dress the house up a little this year and when my sweet friend Sarah from Linley House posted about her Marquee Light sign I knew this would be perfect for our living room window.  That is where this story begins, with a trip to Hobby Lobby (my personal happy place) to purchase project supplies.Make sure that when you are choosing your letters that your word can be spelled out and lite with a single stand of lights, you don’t want them to get too hot with multi strands. I used my fabulous Slice Precision Cutter. Let me just take a minute and tell you about this knife. It’s the most amazing craft knife you will ever use. It has a tiny ceramic blade which makes it perfect for obviously precision cutting and the shape of the knife is comfy to hold too. Best $7.99 you can spend, go, buy one now. You will thank me after your next crafting adventure. 

Back to crafting, Lay your letters out so that you are reading your word, you want to make sure that you  cut off the face of the letters. Save the top of your letters though, we are going to tacky glue them to the backs to reinforce the lights, no wasting here.  Remove all of the insides and gently sand down any rough edges you may have. Get ready to make out your light holes. Remember that you are going to have to fit your lights through these holes so you want them to be big enough to securely hold the lights in place and not let them slip out. We headed to Lowes, to buy a single drill bit, The Mister had re-organized he garage last week and I don’t have a clue were tools were moved to. Good thing I have my own drill stashed away. We used a 2×4 for a base and drilled through on each of our markings. This is where the real work comes in, you need to spend a little time cleaning up the area around the drill holes. A little time with sand paper should do the trick.   The secret to all paint projects at my house is gift wrap and cupcake liners. I have a roll of gift wrap that I spread over the work area to prevent spills on my beautiful butcher block top work tables and I don’t want to clean up paint trays so cupcake liners are the perfect solution and I get to throw everything away when we are finished. I wanted my sign to stand out so I raided my paint stash and found the perfect metallic silver to do the trick. I only painted the inside of my letters and was careful to get the outside edge as well. After all of the paint dried I removed all of the light bulbs from the strand and pushed them through from the front of the letter attaching them in the back. The reinforcement was perfect and held up great.  I used low heat warm LED lights with round bulbs, Target purchase for $10, 60 lights. Here’s a peek at out living room window from the street.

Thank you Sarah for sharing such an adorable idea!