DIY Neon Sign Balloon Dog With Neon Wire :)

This project is about making an easy and fully customised neon light sign for home decoration. Its easy when using neon wire, also known as El wire. I had this stuff laying around in my workshop so i decided to make a cool neon light wall sign with it.

What kind of neon art would you make with it? The balloon dog is a very nice artwork to transform into a sign board and i wanted it to look great switched off and switched on. therefore i first coloured the outline of the dog and later on traced the drawing with the el wire.

Ingredients: neon wire / el wire. i used 0,9mm wire + powersource foam board. the foam board i used was 8mm thick water color paper 300 grams. Works great with the markers simple tools like: circle drawer, scissors, pens, markers, skewer, sticky tape.

Step 1: Collect Materials and Draw Your Neon Sign Design

Step 1. Think of a design you like to trace with the neon wire and draw your design. Check if the corners are not too sharp because the neon wire can't make super sharp corners. Make sure your neon wire is long enough for your design and test if it works corectly. Color your design as you wish. I personally think it's much nicer, because your sign looks good even when the neon is switched off :)

Step 2: Cut Out Artwork and Glue Onto Foam Board

Step 2. Cut out your design and stick onto cardboard or foamboard/posterboard. I used foamboard because it has a clean look and is easy to cut. Now cut out your design with an offset. I was thinking about applying a rim to the outside of the neon sign but decided to skip that during the process.

Step 3: Wiring Time!

Step 3. use your needle to pierce in an angle trough the foamboard where you want to begin wiring. insert the neon from the bottom and pull it all the way through until you reached the connector. pierce holes for the wire to go from the surface to the bottom and back, to make loops that close off each balloon ( in this case) Do this for the total design.

Step 4. Time to use a glue gun but not in the usual way. That would become super messy so use a skewer to grab a little bit of hotglue and smear it under the wire where you started with. keep the wire as straight as possible to make sure it looks like fluid lines when the neon is on. continue all the way to install your wire.

Step 4: Connect Power Supply and Enjoy!

connect your power supply and you are ready to shine! :)