Scrap Wood Custom Neon Sign

by Claire at Pillarboxblue

3 Materials

$10

30 Minutes

Easy

My neighbor had a lot of building work done over the summer. There was a constant skip/dumpster in our road. I managed to rescue some chunky bits of wood from this skip. I combined some of it with roadmaps to make some gorgeous map ornaments (see here). But with another piece, I made a cool custom neon sign for my son.

For this neon sign, I used a chunky bit of wood about 2 inches thick and 2 feet long. I wanted a piece of scrap wood that would stand on its own.

I also bought a 3ft length of El wire (see here) in blue. There are loads of different colors available.

First thing I did was drill a hole into the piece of scrap wood, large enough for the El wire to pass through.

I sanded the wood and then I aged it with dark wood wax.

The neon sign was going to be for my son. I printed his name out in a script font big enough to fit the piece of wood. There is a fabulous free tool you can use on the internet to find the right font ( more details on the blog post at the end).

I taped the word to the front of the wood and then using a sharp tool such as a screwdriver I etched the word into the wood.

Next, I threaded the end of the El wire through the wood and traced around the word. Keeping the wire in place with masking tape.

Once I was happy with the word design of the sign. I removed the masking tape and glued the wire to the wood using a hot glue gun.

Finally, I taped the battery pack to the back of the wood and switched on the sign. With the wire, you can have different modes from full-on, flashing to a fading light.

This fun project was well worth it just to see the smile on my son Fergus's face when he saw his name in lights!