Sparkle Sign

I am excited to show you this light up sign I made, I think it turned out cute and it was fairly inexpensive to make.

Supplies: cutting board, exacto knife, gold poster board, foam core board, twinkle lights, hot glue and glue gun, gold paint, ruler, computer print of word of your choice to trace, pointy stick to punch holes and trace letters.

Figure out how large you want your sign to be, print word accordingly.

Then cut foam core to size.  Measure sides and decided on the depth you want for your box, and cut pieces of foam core to size.  Cut foam core with your exacto knife doing long light strokes, it will take several passes to cut all the way through, but this will make a cleaner cut than just pushing hard and trying to cut it all in one swipe.

Lay out your word of choice on your front piece and trace around the letters with a pointy object, I used a knitting needle.

It will leave the imprint behind.

Cut your gold poster board to the same dimensions as your other side pieces adding the thickness of the foam core to the depth of each piece.  This will make your poster board pieces a little wider than your foam core pieces.  This way you can cover some of your raw edges with the poster board to get a more finished looking result.  I also ended up cutting some small pieces that I bent to place over the corners.

Turns out my green twinkle lights had been attacked by a squirrel in the attic and where not safe to use.  So i decided to use these instead.

I then took my knitting needle and poked holes in my letters, where I could later place lights into the holes, or just let the light shine through.

I then started to fill in the letters with this gold paint pen.

It exploded a bit,

so I moved on to gold paint.

After one coat.

Three coats, and then I started putting on a coat of a gold leaf glaze for some extra shine, and to better match the poster board.  You can see a difference between the S and the rest of the letters.  

I also added some gold dots around the letters to be extra festive.

Next heat up glue gun.

Begin attaching sides and letting dry.  I also added some glue in the inner corners for reinforcement.

Once I have made the foam core box I then hot glued the poster board onto the sides.

Now all that's left is to add the lights.

I put some lights through a few holes but most of the holes are left open to let the light shine through.

I am excited with the outcome!  It was a little time consuming but inexpensive, especially since I used some supplies I just had laying around the house.  It's pretty cute if I do say so myself.