I bought some chalk markers the other day, these chalk markers to be exact, and immediately I knew I had to make some decoration with them. After livening up my “To Do” board with the nice, fluorescent colors, I knew I wanted to make something a little more “permanent.
The perfect idea came to me as we were shopping in Target. I got a frame and decided to make my own “neon” sign. It’s so easy and took me only about half an hour including sketching out how I wanted it to look.
What You’ll Need:
- Chalk Markers
- Ruler
- Scissors
- Black (or Dark) Paper
- Pencil
- Eraser
- Marker (with similar sized tip as chalk marker)
- Library/Credit/Store Loyalty Card
Not Pictured:
- Picture Frame with Glass plate (I used this one from Target)
- Scrap White Paper
- Tracing Paper
- Clear Contact Paper
How to do it:
- Start by deciding on your phrase and sketch out how you want the words to look. I started with regular printer paper and writing the words as large as I wanted to see which style of typeface would work for the effect I wanted. I used the title of my favorite Foo Fighters album because it’s also just a phrase I find stuck in my head regularly.
- Once you have your styles chosen, remove the backing and front plate from your frame and trace inside the actual opening of the frame so you have the boundaries of what will be visible inside the frame. This way you know exactly how much space you have to work with.
- Lay out your phrase the way you want it to look inside the frame. This may take a few tries, so I would suggest to trace yourself a few spaces to use.
- Once you have it looking the way you want it, trace it onto the tracing paper using your regular marker. Make sure you also trace at least the corners of the bounding box to match up with the glass.
- Now you want to clean the glass with a damp paper towel and dry it really well with a dry one. You want to be sure there are no finger prints and you want to be sure there aren’t water streaks that will cause the colors to run.
- Flip your tracing paper over so the words are backwards and lay the glass over it so the words are where they should be.
- Now trace everything with your chalk markers. You want to make sure everything looks the way you want it to. Make sure it has a few minutes to fully dry, as well.
- Take a piece of clear contact paper that has at least a few inches on two sides to hold onto and place it flat over the glass. Take whatever type of plastic card you have on hand and smooth out any bubbles that may have occurred.
- Cut your black or dark paper to fit inside the frame and reassemble the frame with your glass, the paper, and the backing. You are finished!
Now you have a nice, bright sign to decorate your space. If you ever decide you want it to say something different, just remove the contact paper, wash the marker off, and start over.
Mine is now adding some much needed color and decoration to the shelf I added to my wall as a charging shelf. It was very bare during the day when I had nothing charging.
