I made a marquee y’all!

I’ve been wanting to buy a marquee for a long time and have seen many takes on the retro sign decor idea. I love the use of upcycled letters from signs…take a look at the los vegas neon museum here…or google “las vegas sign graveyard.” AMAZING right? Anywhoo…those are really really big and even more really expensive. Go onto etsy and you’ll find that a single letter will run you about $100. That ish cray. Coming from a girl with a “I can do that” mentality I decided to try to do it myself. The question was…how can I make this happen on a budget? I saught out alternative options such as this option where the JunkArtGypsyz use 16″ laser cut wood and install lights or this option from one of my favorite blogs with pre-made 12″ cardboard letters. The wood and cardboard letters are accessible at the craft store but I really had my heart set on metal letters. I ran across 16″ aluminum letters by Danny Seo at Marshalls. Each letter ran me 12.99. Deal! I wasn’t so much into the color…but the bones for my project were there.  The only limitations were…I had to pick letters I could flip around…such as I Y O M A C V W T U E.  Try making words out of those letters! haha.  The K didn’t flip perfectly, but good enough.  You’ll see when I post how I’m decorating with these why I chose the word “CAKE.”  Runner up option was HOME but that wasn’t as fun!

Here is a pic of the letters before I got to work on them:

I measured out where I wanted the lights and took to drillin’

You can see where I drew out the spacing for the lights a little better in this next picture:

…and the tools I used in this next one.  I already owned all of the tools so that didn’t cost me a penny!  I hit a snag while drilling the “K” which you can see there!  There is a structural wire on the inside which I thought I had avoided while spacing out the holes for the lights….but NOPE! That little snafoo wasn’t going to get me down…onward ho!

 

Here it is with holes drilled:

Then…it was time to get my paint on! Valspar Metallic gold on the inside. I already had the paint too from my last project…so more pennies saved!

Valspar Satin Black (3.99) on the outside:

Voila…paint is done!

 

I attached lights from target.  It took 2 strings (13.99 each).

Ooh La Loo! There she is!!