DIY Halloween marquee letters

It’s starting to look like Halloween Town around here! If you’ve stopped by eighteen25 recently, you will know those fun gals are in full swing for the spooky holiday with month long Halloween tutorials. We were lucky enough to be a part of the fun sharing our DIY Halloween marquee letters:

DIY Halloween marquee letters

We’ve seen a handful of adorable summer marquee tutorials around Blogland and decided to put a black, orange and purple twist on it. It was a snap to make and really makes a statement that Halloween is near!

To get started you’ll need just a few supplies….

DIY Halloween marquee letters

  • Americana multisurface paint in black, purple.
  • 12″ paper mache letters from Joann’s, (be sure to use your Joann, Hobby Lobby + Michael’s 40% coupons for each letter- score!) We originally thought of the phrase “BOO” but our Joann’s were out of O’s, darn it. “EEK!” is just as cute and sure to make the same statement.
  • 70 ct. mini lights x2 (found in the Halloween aisle at Walmart)
  • Foam brush x2 (fact: Kelli is a foam brush hoarder and has over 200 in her craft stash! LOL)

Alrighty, let’s get started shall we?

DIY Halloween marquee letters

As you can see, there are a lot of steps but we promise it’s worth it for how stinkin’ cute these are!

  1. First things first, using an X-acto knife, remove the FACE of each cardboard letter.
  2. Paint the outside black.
  3. Paint the inside purple.
  4. Using a white colored pencil, mark where each bulb will go, appx. 2-ish” apart.
  5. Drill a 29/6″ hole through each white pencil mark, (the same as your light.)
  6. Push each lightbulb into the hole, nice & snug!
  7. Because of how the strands are made, the string won’t match up exactly with the number of holes so using bakers twine (or small zip ties) simply tie the extra lights down to the strand.
  8. To connect the strands to the next letter, simply plug into the outlet and keep on marking, drilling, filling in until your Halloween marquee lights are finished and eerily glowing! (;

Because the strands are a bit bulky, they have a hard time standing up solo so we propped them. Still, pretty cute right? (;

Before they were plugged in….

We are huge fans of PicMonkey.com and played around with the letters in different finishes. Here’s one at “dusk”, LOL. In person for real, the lights of the glow is just so pretty!

DIY Halloween Marquee Letters

We debated about what color to paint the inside of the letters so here’s a peek if they had been painted orange:

These letters are such a fun addition to our DIY Halloween decor, like our spider egg wreath, haunted birdhouses and last years project we shared in Spooktacular September, our skull plaques:

DIY Halloween skull plaques

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22 Comments

  1. This is SO AWESOME! Love it! I really love all of your Halloween decor such awesome inspiration. I want to get these letters and make each one of my kid’s names and put in on my wall! Thanks for the great post and awesome blog!

  2. I freeeeeaking love these! Thanks for linking them up- I’ll be featuring them tomorrow on 30days. And guess what? I get to see you in ONE WEEK!! woot woot! Love you!

  3. What a great idea and thanks for the tips as to where you can find the supplies. I also love the skull plaques. Thanks for sharing.

  4. Yay! I love the cardboard letter marquee you made. Ha, and this is pretty much exactly what I did to make my “metal” letters, just without the lights. 🙂 So cute!

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