Rainbow Marquee Light

Marquee lights are back in fashion whether its letters, words or cute shapes, you can find them in any decor store. I always wanted one, but I could only find small ones for some reason.

I am a fan of all unicorn, rainbows and glitter things. Who isn’t? right?

I made my marquee light in the shape of a rainbow.

Since I wanted it to be cheap, I reused some cardboard boxes my neighbors threw out.

You can also make it from foam board or MDF if you rather.

A box of cardboard (the size should be bigger the light you are interested to make)

Craft knife

Scissors

Masking tape

Marker

Ruler / measuring tape

Double sided tape

Hot glue gun and sticks

Primer spray paint

3 Big white Construction Paper (big enough to fir the base of the rainbow)

Glue stick

Rainbow acrylic colors

Paintbrush

Rainbow glitter

Skewer

String lights

Batteries

Print out the rainbow attached here.

Use masking tape to attach the rainbow parts and cut around the rainbow shape using scissors.

Place the rainbow on the cardboard and use it as a stencil, using the marker to mark the outline of the rainbow on the cardboard.

Use a craft knife to cut out the rainbow base. Be carful not to bend the cardboard.

Measure 7 cm wide cardboard strips using a ruler or measuring tape. Cut out the strips with the craft knife.

Use double sided tape to attach the cardboard sides to the cardboard rainbow base.

Tape them together leaving about a third of the width from the edge of the strip on one side and 2/3 of the width on the other side.

for better understanding, look at the pictures above.

Seal the edges using hot glue to make sure there are no gaps between the rainbow and the sides.

Use the primer spray paint to paint the entire side of the cardboard that'll be painted.

Cut the same rainbow shape out of the construction paper.

Cut strips that will fit both sides of the cardboard sides that is shown. (the wide ones should be a 7 cm wide strips and the thinner ones are approximately 4-5 cm but make sure you measure).

I had to make 3 strips of each but that will be depending the length of your construction paper.

Use glue stick to glue the rainbow construction paper to the rainbow cardboard.

All painting will go on that side of the rainbow cardboard, so that construction paper makes sure our painting's background will be clean and white.

Use double sided tape to attach the construction paper strips to both sides of the cardboard sides, As shown in the picture above.

Cut the excess edges of the paper sides using scissors.

Use a pen and draw the clouds's outline.

Use any rainbow paint you like and the paintbrush to paint the rainbow as you wish, I went for a classic rainbow using red, orange, yellow, green, teal, light blue, indigo and purple (the pink wasn't the original plan, but I ended up finishing all other colors and I still had a little white shown) .

Paint the outline of the clouds with any color you like.

Use double sided tape to cover all edges of the rainbow's sides. The reason I haven’t used any other glue is that my cardboard had big holes that any glue I'd try to apply over it, would leak into the holes.

Sprinkle the rainbow glitter over the edges until it is fully coated.

Pour the excess glitter in a bag or the sink.

Use the string light to decide the layout of the lights.

When you like the layout you created use a pen to make a tiny dot where you'd want the light to be.

Use a skewer to make holes where you marked the dots.

Push the lights into the holes, leaving the strings in the back side so the front side stays neat.

As I show in the picture above, you don’t have to leave the lights as is.

You can also make a classic marquee light using Ping-Pong balls:

Use skewer to poke a hole in each of the balls and push the lights in. Secure in place with any type of glue.

I originally bought star shaped string light, but I ended up liking the small lights best.

But you can buy those shaped lights and use them.

Use double sided tape to tape the batteries to the back.

Use clear masking tape to make all strings fixed.