Oh wise crafters, I need some help with this!

[mellyp]

Hi everyone - I heart craftster and love all of the amazing ideas you come up with. I hope some of you can help me out with my current project. I am making a fake neon sign for my boyfriend's birthday party and I would like to make it as realistic as possible. My ideas so far are to use the thick posterboard (with the reinforced foam inside) painted black as a background. I bought some red and blue "neon" craft paints to paint the words on it. But I'm not satisfied with that. I want to try using some clear rubber tubing from the hardware store, painting that with the neon paint and then running clear or blue christmas lights through the tubes and setting them to blink, if I did this I'd have to come up with a good way to mount the tubing and lights and obviously use something stronger than posterboard...so if any of you have any advice, ideas or just think mine are crap, please let me know - any comments are appreciated!
Thanks so much,
Melly P

[smarmyclothes]

you could also check out those rope lights.  that way, you could take out the step of cramming xmas lights into a tube. 

[mellyp]

thanks tallyho - i did think of that, i wonder how flexible they are as far as bending into shapes...i am trying to spell out the words "blues club" (i know, can i make things more complicated?!?!)
my boyfriend is a musician and i am decorating the house like an old blues club - i need a sign to go over the door to his recording studio where we are setting things up to look like the club; lots of red and purple velvet, little round cafe tables, candles. i printed up b&w photos of blues singers from the internet that i've enlarged to hang as well as signs from major streets in new orleans and memphis. i have flowers for the girls to wear in their hair and cigars for the guys, i'm asking everyone to dress up...i'm excited! (thanks for listening to me ramble - it's good to see everything i am doing in writing!)

[quarkiegirl]

How about some sort of light box with the letters cut out? then you could put the clear tubing over top of the cut outs and light it from behind.

[mellyp]

i think i get it - so a hollow box and i'd have a front/top area where the letters would be the negative space and then i'd put the tubing or the rope lights in where the letters would be? then some kind of additional light in the box to illuminate the letters more probably, it would be a giant litebrite! thanks for the idea quarkiegirl!

[quarkiegirl]

Yeah, kind of like a litebrite with a tube! And I realize I forgot to include the most important part--the light. I think a flourescent light would be best, since it won't get so hot and be a potential fire hazard.

[mellyp]

Right, fire is not one of my design ideas. Thanks so much Quarkiegirl - and everyone else - for your great ideas, I really appreciate it!

[jessicakes]

adding to the lightbox idea, you could also add that plastic type colored stuff to the back of it...I don't know what it's called or even if you can find it anywhere, so I probably just confused you  , but that would add a sort of neon sign effect to it. I hope this helped! Sounds like it's going to be a great party

[ph33lth3lov3]

cellophane? thats a good idea.

[madebykris]

You have one lucky boyfriend!  You could come plan my next party ;-).  With the effort people are talking about it might be worth it to call around to junk yards or maybe call neon making places to see if they sell used signs.  It's kind of a generic phrase, you might be able to find it pre-existing for cheap, especially if you live in a big city.  It's worth a shot, 15 minutes of phone calls might save you hours of work.