Marquee light: How to make a wall hanging marquee light for a nursery

How I made this marquee light for the circus theme nursery using only wood scraps and some plaint! From sketch to final hanging, check how we made this $15 light!

We are so happy about Peanut's nursery feedback and I am super excited about all the comments and emails, so Thank you!! And just like I promise on that post, here is one of the few projects I had in my drafts, now is the time for one of my favorites: The circus K marquee.

I wanted to make a marquee K because of our last name “Kelley” since Peanut's sex was a surprise and we had decided on two names with different initials. I've seen foam-board tutorials for these cuties, but I wanted something more resistant and lasting, so unlike most of my up-cycled projects this time I wanted wood instead of cardboard or foam-board.

For this project the only thing I bought was the lights ($15.00 with a coupon), everything else was recycled. We had just received our floors and the pallet was laying around our front yard, so I used pieces from the feet of the pallet for the sides and after getting all the nails out I used that board for the K shape.

The process to make a marquee light

The very first thing I did was to draw a small version of how I wanted the K, it would have been a lot faster to just select a font that had the look I wanted but at that point the computer screen still made me dizzy so I just went the old way. After I finish the K, I used the same principle I used to escalate the logo in my office wall and enlarge it to the real size I wanted (about 35″ tall)

Once I had the template on paper I cut it so I could tape it to my board, it would have been easier to just use a marker, but the lazy pregnant wanted to skip a step =] I carefully cut the board with a jigsaw – I should have just ask Ken to do it, because I ended up cutting the bucket underneath (I can blame my pregnancy clumsiness for that, because I never had anything like that happen to me before)

After I cut the K shape, I used all the little rectangles they had assemble to make the pallet feet and place them on the sides. Because I needed space on the back for the lights I placed 1.5″pieces of wood under the K so that when I glued the side pieces the K would be exactly on the center.

And because at 8 months pregnant I was so uncomfortable, I decided to just work on the floor in front of the garage =] and no one could move me from there! That's what happens when getting up is a very extreme task.

I asked Ken to help me with the angles to finish (to keep me from breaking anything else) I let the wood glue dry for a full day because I added lots of glue in all of the joints.

Once the glue was dry I sanded the whole thing and used calking to fill up and smooth the joints.

Adding the light bulbs to the light

Before I cut my K shape I made sure I mark all the little dots where the lights were going to go. I just used a nail and hammer for that. To actually make the wholes I used a drill. I measure the socket of my lights to make the holes as close as possible so that I could have the socket fit tightly in the hole.

And here are my lights in case you were wondering, they give a super nice glow but they are not very strong, perfect for a night light.

I gave it 3 coats of paint (I used the leftover from the closet) and to plug we got an extension cord and add a light switch, of course, I had the hardest time finding a switch for the exact cord we got, so I asked my Mom to bring me a few of them from Chile.

The Marquee light reveal

I am super happy about how it ended up looking, and it was way less work than the elephant lamp. This is how the marquee light looks like during the day! I really like the frosted light bulbs!

And this is how the light looks like at night!

So there you go! I hope this can help anyone wanting to go the wood route for a project like this.

I hope you are all having a great day!

ps. If you are one of the hundreds that emailed me in the past few months, know that I am working on my inbox now so I hopefully will get to you shortly (hopefully I'll get down to 0 next week) Penut only cooperates a few days a week =]