How I Built a Giant 10ft Tall Entrance for My School Dance

So, I am in ASB at my high school, and, one day, I decided that for our next dance it would be awesome to build an entrance for everyone to walk through. After deciding what to build, I got to work, and, in the end, I think it turned out great.

Parts:

A lot of 1x3 boards

(7) 8x4 plywood pieces

paint: white, yellow, red, black

led light strips

wooden letters

Step 1: Laying Out the Cards

To create a fan effect for the playing cards, I laid out 5 plywood pieces with 2 pieces of plywood on the left. The plywood should be placed overlapping with two on the right over the middle plywood. From the top, each piece of plywood is 2 feet from each other, and, from the bottom each piece of plywood is 8 inches from each other.

Step 2: Making the Structure of the Cards

For this, I laid 1x3's out stretching around the outside corners and then built all the plywood square under that so if you've ever seen how a fake wall is made in movies or in mazes you would understand the process. So basically you make a large rectangle of 1x3's and then make smaller rectangles within it. If this is complicated, please refer to the video for pictures. Finally, I flipped it over and stapled everything together. Then, I covered up the staple holes and prepared for painting.

Step 3: Painting

I painted two layers of white on the background and then made stencils for all of the letters, numbers and spades, which I then painted onto the cards. For the borders that are black, I made straight lines then put blue tape on the sides and filled in the center to get some nice clean black lines. Once I got everything painted, I had to do the Jack, which was really just made by my dad and it looked awesome, so I didn't question it. After I completed the cards, I had some extra time, so that's when I decided to add to the top part...

Step 4: Building the MONTE CARLO Sign Part

For this part, I used two 4x8 pieces of plywood and placed them under the playing card entrance. I then drew out a cool looking curve approximately 2 feet above the playing cards. I then cut this out and painted that entire thing black. The next thing I did was staple the letters to the flat black background, which I painted white. The reasoning behind this was that I added an led RGB light strip below the letters, so, when it was dark, the letters would light up in red, green, then blue, which added a lot of character to it.

Step 5: Finishing Touches

Lastly, I built two stands for the sign.. These stands were made with one 1x3 going vertical and one going horizontal. I then built a small 45 45 90 triangle at the part where the two pieces came together to make it extremely strong. After this, I was completely done with my build. Thanks for reading!