Peace sign-Pottery Barn knockoff

For Christmas this year I decided to make my niece a large, lighted peace sign to hang on her bedroom wall.  I saw this idea in a Pottery Barn catalog, but found it to be priced out of range for our gift giving budget.  It didn't seem like it would be that hard to create so I ran my idea by my hubby.  He agreed to help out so we we went off to the hardware store in search of plywood.  

We purchased a thin sheet of plywood (I cant remember exactly, but I think it was only about 1/4" thick).  I sketched out a peace sign using rulers-which I usually revolt against using-to make sure everything would be even and look correct.  This was the most difficult part of this project.  After I did the sketch and thought it looked good, my hubby got to work cutting it out for me.  He even sanded it!  Then we put on a few coats of white paint.  I had thought about making holes all around the sign to stick the lights through, but decided that I liked the idea of them being behind the sign and backlighting it.  I spread out a string of white Christmas lights over the back of the sign and started to tape them down.  Problem was, the tape wasn't staying down.  I thought maybe we could use a staple gun and staple the wires on, but the staples were to deep, or the wood was to thin.  Either way, the result was an oops of going all the way through the sign, and then it was necessary to patch up the holes and paint job.  After the fix was complete, we decided that push pins would work to hold the tape down and the wires were quickly held in place and the sign was completed.

Here it is (sorry for my hub's hands-the sign requires 2 nails to hang and we dont have any in our house to demo it from) unlit.

And here it is with the lights lit up.

I love how this turned out.  My niece loves it.  It was fairly easy to make and very inexpensive in comparison to buying from the store.  Hope that maybe you've been inspired to look through a catalog with a new eye.  

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm linking this project here:

Made by You Mondays