[lawrie]

DIY Neon sign BATES MOTEL (under £5)

I ordered some Electroluminescent (EL) wire from Ebay a while ago and wanted to experiment a bit with it. I have seen people include it in costumes etc, but I thought it had potential to be used in signs. When a thread popped up about a Bates Motel themed haunt, it gave me the nudge to give it a try. So here is the finished prop, with a short video, and I will add a tutorial as well when I have time. This method can be used for pretty much any neon sign. I made this in about half an hour (bar letting the paint dry) so it is a very quick and cheap prop to put together. I only had one colour of EL wire, but with this prop it would look even better with a second, red coloured wire to blink on and off with "Vacancies" in smaller lettering underneath. I got my EL wire from Ebay and it cost me less than £3 for a 9 foot length of wire and the battery box transformer to run it. The box does make a buzzing sound, which you can hear in the video, but it comes with 3 settings, on, slow flash and quick flash, so is quite suitable for a number of uses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tly9uYzo5tw

 

[lawrie]

Some pictures showing the process..

(note the tape)

back of the sign

lit up in daylight

 

[Danski]

That's a cool idea! How long was your EL wire?

 

[lawrie]

It was a 9ft EL wire, and I needed all bar about 4 inches of it! I was only aiming for a quick and easy job, one that will pass when viewed from a distance rather than close up. If you needed this to look better it would be simple to use wood as a backing instead of card, you would just need to drill holes rather than poke them. You could also use a hot glue gun to fix the wire instead of tape. This would look neater, but would mean that the wire is fixed in place. I am undecided on whether I will end up using this sign, so wanted to make sure I could remove the EL wire if I needed to.

 

[Evil Bob]

I am planning on doing this too. I bought some translucent white tubing to diffuse the light to make it look more like traditional neon signs.

 

[lawrie]

make sure you post it. I had thought of that too, I also thought about trying to raise the wire off the background to get that effect as well. However, If I use the prop it will be from an upstairs window, so wont make a difference, so I left it as it would have made the project harder.

 

[DaveintheGrave]

Your sign turned out great! Looks like the real thing.

 

[Evil Bob]

Yes, your sign looks awesome! It was rude of me not to say that earlier.

 

[Icepick]

Looks really good. If you haven to notice and light bleed onto the tape from a distance, they using clear tape. The frosted (invisible when pressed down) tape will glow a bit anywhere it isn't pressed down smooth. In an upper window you probably won't even notice though.