Giant Light Up Marquee Letters

Hello,

I was asked, at short notice, to make some glitter-covered 6 foot high letters ,with lights in them, for a Karaoke event.

They wanted the lettering in the style of the film " Sing" that recently came out.

The nearest font that I could find was Super Clarendon.

I have not made anything like this before but it seemed fairly straightforward.

They asked for it it be made from 10mm MDF but that would mean a lot of weight ; they agreed to go with the suggestion of 10cm Celotex foam insulation.

Each Celotex sheet cost £33.

I wanted to project the letters onto the foam but my ancient projector distorts quite bit so I had to print out various sizes of the required word and go with the best result.

I projected them onto the Celotex foil-backed foam and used a big marker.

It was a bit off so I had to freehand a lot of it but it gave the basic shape.

I cut the foam letters out using a serrated plasterboard knife.

The foam has to be supported well as it is quite fragile.

It cuts very easily.

Using a 22mm flat head drill bit, I drilled a hole about every 8" for the bulb holders.

The bulb holders were £1.59 each but could be much cheaper from Ebay if time was not an issue.

I cut a v-shaped groove running the length of the letters, passing though each hole; these are for the wiring.

The bulb holders were just pushed through and held by compression; at the front I added a ring of fire resistant PinkGrip adhesive and smoothed it around with a wet finger.

The wiring is very simple; just parallel.

I had to put two wires into each terminal to achieve this.

The last pairing, of course, led to a plug socket.

I used full sized LED bulbs for the low heat that they give off; they were still quite warm though.

The wiring was the most time intensive part of the build.

I cut 5mm plywood boards, slightly smaller than the letter, leaving two struts for supports.

These were stuck onto the back with PinkGrip adhesive.

I covered it in contact adhesive and then sprinkled litter all over it.

This covered the imperfections in the foam.

I was finding glitter for weeks afterwards.

These are now rented out for Karaoke events and go along way to complementing drunken people singing ABBA songs.

Thanks

Please vote if you enjoyed this Instructable.