# Flashing Signs - Part 1 of 3



## rmwitch (Aug 17, 2009)

Flashing Signs










First, I’d like to tell you that I try to do things as they call it “on the cheap.” So, I try to find ways to turn inexpensive stuff into unique items. This tutorial may seem to be long but I tried to cover everything. This happens to be my first tutorial so bear with me. Trust me, they are quite easy to make!

The Story: One day I purchased some signs from the dollar store. I’m sure that some of you have seen them or even purchased them yourselves. These signs are one or two word signs that say things such as Toxic, Insane Asylum, etc. These signs are made of Styrofoam.










While sitting around one day, I was thinking how I could display these signs and attract attention. I came up with this idea…

Idea: Make these signs light up!

What I did: Because these signs are flimsy by themselves and I wanted to give them some strength, I traced the outside shape of the sign on a piece of scrap plywood and cut it out with a jigsaw. Next, I glued the plywood to the back of the sign and painted the exposed plywood flat black to match the rest of the sign.

At this point I had a very strong sign that would hold up to outside conditions. Next, I decided to suspend these signs by screwing a 4 foot stake to the back of the sign (you can make them any height you want). Now I was able to pound the stake into the ground to hold the sign up.

These signs looked pretty cool during the day but you couldn’t see them at night. It was at this point I decided to make these signs light up. I had some cheap strings of mini lights laying around that I purchased on closeout for less than a buck.










I wrapped these lights around the sign. They lit the sign up nice but I still wanted to attract more attention so I made the signs flash. These turned out great. Not only would the flash of the lights attract your attention at night, they would only stay lit long enough for you to read the sign. The flash was so fast that if you didn’t catch what the sign said, you would have to stay until it flashed again to completely read the sign. Note: When you make a prop, it’s nice to have someone stop and look than to just walk by.

I called these signs my prototype signs. 

I was looking at these signs and said to myself that these are easy enough to make myself.

Not wanting to be like everybody else with the same signs, I decided to make my own with the words that “I” wanted instead of what the store that sold them thought I wanted. I wanted my signs to be unique.

My Plan: What I plan to do this year and because I have 3 acres of land (some wooded) to work with, I would make a lighted (flashing) pathway so that the TOTs could follow these signs to other various props/actors that I also have planned, and this flashing pathway would eventually lead the TOTs to their final destination – their treats! Besides, with their attention on reading the signs, it’s easy for an actor to “jump” out and scare the dickens out of them!

I eventually ended up making 60 more signs!

Here’s how I did it:::::

I purchased a 4-foot by 8 foot by 1-inch thick sheet of Dow insulation foam board. Because of the size of my signs, this one sheet of foam yielded approximately 24 signs.

Next, I used Photoshop to come up with a “blank” sign shape.










I made my signs oval but you can make them any shape or size that you want. My signs happened to be 7 inches tall by 24 inches wide.

Once I had the design shape that I wanted, I choose a font that I liked. Then I went to town designing signs with words such as BEWARE, WITCHES, WARLOCKS, ZOMBIES, WEREWOLVES, VAMPIRES, etc., etc.










Once I had my designs done, I used a program that was so graciously recommended by someone on this group called Rasterbater (The Sect of Homokaasu - The Rasterbator). I don’t know how I ever got along without this program? I use it for anything that I want to be bigger than the standard sheet of paper.

Once you have your designs done, you can use this program to make your signs any size you want! For this program, I turned my signs vertical and made them 1 page wide and 3.5 pages long. This gave me my 7” X 24” signs.

Once I had my signs printed, I took these designs and transferred them to the foam board using carbon paper and tracing over them.

Now that my signs were on the foam board, I cut the shape out using a jigsaw and an extra long blade that I got from Harbor Freight Tools for 99 cents. You can cut them out with whatever you’d like, but the jigsaw blades made the job go easy and fast.










Once I had all the signs cut out of the foam board, I took a trim router that I also bought at Harbor Freight for $20. You can also carve out the letters with a Dremmel tool or whatever you want to accomplish this part.










I also purchased a 1/8 inch router bit at Lowes for @ $13.










Now comes the carving: Because the trim router has a height adjustment, once I had it set to the desired depth, I left it alone until the entire project was done. I wanted everything to be uniform. Now I carved out all the words on the signs. Be sure to do this outside and wear a mask because it makes a mess and can be hazardous to your health!

With the signs cut out and carved, now comes the painting. You can use any colors you want but for my particular signs, I painted all of them with flat black exterior latex paint using a SMOOTH 4 inch trim roller, leaving the carved out letters untouched. I didn’t find it necessary to prime the signs first.

Once all the signs were painted black, I painted the carved out lettering. I went nuts experimenting with different colors of acrylic craft paints that I bought at Michaels for 49 cents per bottle.










The colors that worked the best in the end were the glow in the dark colors. The reason is because after the signs flashed, the words glow long enough to “read” the signs after the lights went out.

With the signs painted black and the lettering painted, I wanted the signs to look old/weather beaten, so I took some flat white exterior primer and a “dry” roller to give them a touch of white. To accomplish this I wet the roller with paint then rolled the wet roller on some paper towels to get most of the paint back off. This gave my signs a dry brushed look.

With the signs painted, now comes the plywood backing. I traced the outside shape of the signs onto 1/2 inch plywood (again, to give the signs strength). Once cut out, each sign was glued to its corresponding piece of plywood using foam board adhesive.


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