Light up marquees are the rage right now. Anything from metal arrows, to fun words are available for you to purchase at home decor and craft stores for on average a cool hundred bucks or so. I wanted something for our theater room, but didn’t want to shell out the dollars it would take to get the size marquee I wanted. So I decided to make one myself. It all started with a frame I found at Thrift Town for around $10, and gave it a coat of spray paint.

I needed the sign to be fairly lightweight, so I removed the glass portion of the frame and used the existing foam backing of the picture. I spaced out where I wanted the lights to go, marked the spot with a sharpie, and used needle nosed pliers to punch holes where I had marked. EASY!

Next I spray painted the foam backing black with chalkboard paint, and glued on a piece of poster board I placed in the center. From there I attached a lightweight chalkboard sign so I could write in what movies were playing that day in our theater.

Once dry, I brought inside and placed the lights into each hole. I used a strand of Christmas lights. Important tip, before you cut the holes, count how many lights are in a strand, and space out your lights accordingly, therefore only having to use one strand. I was off by two on my project and had to use an entire other string of lights :/ I also helped secure the strand of lights to the back of the frame with some duct tape.

Now comes the cool part. Take your clear ornaments. The ones I bought were glass, but they have them in plastic too. Take off the metal hook topper of the ornament.

Flatten the edges of the aluminum topper, and insert the prongs into the holes with the lights.

Once the in place, squeeze the aluminum to where it secures the lights on the back and reach around the front to attach the glass ornament back onto the metal prongs.

It’s so cool how it holds everything in place!!! I’m ridiculously excited about this.

Tada…done!

To see a live explanation on how to make this project as seen on Good Day Sacramento’s Thrifty Thursday, click the below link.

http://gooddaysacramento.cbslocal.com/video/11106336-thrifty-thursday-diy-light-up-marquees/

Here’s a picture of tools I used:

Happy thrifting!

Gina Doglione-Nielsen is featured every week on Good Day Sacramento’s Thrifty Thursdays, and owns GNJ Consulting which handles Public, Social, and Media Relations for Thrift Town Stores. Gina lives in Northern California with her amazing husband Josh, and is constantly on the go with three “very active” and “strong personality” bambinos; aka Team Nielsen, and loves every minute of it.