Here is a custom green neon sign I made- normally, these can cost up to £300 for the size I made- this whole thing will cost you only 10% of that!

This can say anything you want, I have chosen the word Musky

Supplies

You will need a box of small nails (around 15mm will be fine)

(Silicone) Neon lights - I used 4m just from Amazon (I'll attach a screenshot) The more you get, the more you will have to play with so I'd recommend oversizing and if you really want to, you can trim it.

Hammer

Spray Paint (choice colour, I used black)

MDF sheet or any spare wood on hand- I recommend a thickness of no greater than 10mm as it will get heavy after that

Pencil

Optional:

String

Ruler

Drill

Step 1: The Outline

When you get all of your stuff together, you're going to start with just a pencil. Whatever your design is, you're going to draw it directly onto the board just nice and lightly-don't worry, you can trim the board later as I did, or if you're short on space, you could do it now.

All the letters need to connect for this simple version so I used Neon Beach's custom sign maker so I could play around with fonts (I'll link it below)

I then used the string to get an idea how much length I would use with the design vs how much I had to play with. This isn't essential if you're a risktaker but it does help a lot.

When you're happy, go over it a bit thicker so you can easily see the design.

https://neonbeach.com/products/custom-neon-sign

Step 2: Nailing

Now you've got the design on the board, youre going to choose where to start and grab your hammer and nails. Roughly look at the width of your neon rope and youre going to start nailing into the board with enough space to then fi the rope between the nails but it fits quite snugly.

Continue pulling the rope, marking out 'pin points', nailing them in and then wrapping the rope around/through. You'll find you actually need less than you think but if you do extra, it doesnt matter, you can just pull them out. Make sure your nails dont go all the way through the board! They should not poke through the back side and should have about 10mm sticking out the front side.

Be patient and take your time getting each letter before moving on.

When you're done, it should look something like what I have attached. (Use my nails as reference points for specific curves)

Step 3: Backboard

Now the backboard. The reason we are doing this after the nails is so we dont have any ugly reflective silver nails on the design.

This isn't overly scientific, there are just some points to bare in mind:

1: take a picture looking like the one I took attached to step 2 to make sure you know how to re-wind the rope to your shape

2: take the rope off and set it aside

3: find a well ventilated area and put something down for the overspray

The first thing I did was mark out the corners I wanted to trim and draw on the shape I was going to cut the backboard to.

Any saw here will do, just trim the backboard to your desired size.

Now you're going to sand the edges and this is important! It will make a big difference in the end so just try and smooth it over.

I also knew i wanted to screw this into the wall so i drilled my holes here too. Consider how you will mount it so we dont stick anything ugly on the front of this.

When that's done, get to spraying! I only did 3 coats and that was plenty- you will need to pay attention to those pesky edges as they will soak more paint up so will require more layers

Step 4:

When this is all dry, just re-wind your cable on it and enjoy the results!

If you want to take it a step further, you could do some cable management or paint the power cord to match your backround but I didn't think about that so I may do that in the future.

Enjoy your neon sign!