Carnival Ticket Booth - The Sign!

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Category: How-Tos

Written by Jen, Supreme Internet Goddess

Now that you've got the candy booth built, it's time for the bright, gleaming joy that'll lure the kiddies in.  That's right, the sign.

Here's what you'll need:

Styrofoam, at least 4' by 2'
Razor blades, or something to carve foam
Tape
Marker
Latex Paint
Paint Brushes
String lights that don't get too hot (think LED)

Cutting and Shaping

First off, cut a triangular piece of foam.  The longest edge, about 4', will be the base of the sign, where it meets with the top of the candy booth.

Shave the excess foam off the other 2 edges until you get the shape you want.  With my amazing Photoshop skills, I've drawn this easy to follow illustration:

At this point you'll realize if you handle this thing too much, especially if using pill foam, you'll soon have nothing left but a pile of potential suffocation, so tape off the edges until the whole thing is solid and stable.

We also poked holes for lights, too.  I believed we used a soldering iron in a well ventilated area for this.  Quick and painless.  Of course, be careful.

Lettering

We went through about 500 sheets of paper and some cursing before we got our letters to print correctly.  I recommend using a font that has a textured look, like the one I used.  It enabled me to use 2 colors just for the lettering, as opposed to a stark single colored font.  The font I used is called Circus (and it's free!).

From there, trace your lines (if necessary) so your pattern is visible.

Painting

Using a font like Circus made it easy to figure out what I needed to carve out and what could stay.  I simply went with the parts of the font that were already dark.  I painted these carved areas blue.  NEATNESS IS NOT ONLY NOT A REQUIREMENT HERE, IT IS ACTUALLY FORBIDDEN.  Be messy.  You're gonna paint over parts of color number 1 anyway.

Once the dark part of the lettering was done I painted over the lighter part in color number 2.  You have to be a little neater here, but it's still really, really easy to make it look great with little effort/artistic inclinations.

Color number 3 goes outside the letters and covers all the rest that is unpainted.  Paint over the tape, too.

We used LED Christmas lights for the sign.  They give off like no heat and the color is nice and deep.  It works really well.

Wiggle and shove.  You'll get 'em in there.

And the finished product.  We attached it to the candy booth with 2 small 1" x 2" pieces of wood taped to the back of the sign on one end, while the other ends were screwed into the candy booth frame.

Please, leave any and all comments and questions in the blog.  Thanks!