Getting Crafty - Ragnar Edition, Part II - Electric Bugaloo

As I mentioned last week, Ragnar McDowell is coming up soon, and part of Labor Day weekend was devoted to getting my craft on in preparation.  On the blog last week were the jumpsuits, and this week, it's time to discuss the signage for our campsite.

As a reminder, last year, our camp sign looked like this:

Rag'Merica!
Freak yeah!

It was made out of a "create your own sign" kit Bryan and Jen found at a decoration store, and it worked really well.  Since our colors were red, white, and blue, the bright colors and size of the letters worked well with our theme.  While walking around on Thursday night last year, we ran across one of the ladies from Team GroundPounders making a team sign with this cool glowing wire she'd found online.  I filed that away for further use, so when it came time to make a sign for Team Breaking Rag, I searched the wide internets to find something suitable.  As usual, Amazon came through:

Suh-weet!

The next step in the process was to find a material from which to make the sign.  My boss, Eric, and his wife Laura are super handy, so I asked him what he might suggest; Chris and I previously brainstormed a bit, and we thought about potentially using the plastic material from which campaign signs are made.  Eric gave me the additional idea of using masonite board, the stuff that you nail to the back of IKEA (and similar) furniture to finish off the back panel of bookcases and the like.  That seemed like a good idea; we wanted something that was sturdy enough to not bend in the breeze (it was rather windy last year) but not too heavy, since we're planning on suspending it from the underside of our new canopy.  The masonite board sounded like a good idea, plus, it was pretty easy to obtain for a reasonable cost.  Off to Home Depot!

Success!

HD sells the board in huge pieces (the size of standard sheet of plywood), but when we mentioned we'd need it cut down, the helpful gentleman working in lumber showed us pre-cut pieces that were the exact size we were thinking of - 4'x2'.  Awesome!  We paid for our purchase and headed home.

The next day, while watching college football (thank the sweet baby Jesus college football is back!), I set up on the large ottoman in front of the couch.  Kaylee helped, mainly by giving the board tons of kisses.  Thankfully, the EL wire is waterproof.

So very, very helpful.

I originally attempted blowing up the team logo on our computer and printing out a real-size template, but the printer freaked out at my command to print a 25 piece drawing.  Whatever.  Instead, I printed out the standard logo size and, using my maths, did a few calculations to determine where everything should go on the board.

Commence the maths!

This approach worked well for figuring out where everything should start and end, and I was able to outline the boxes around the elements using my tape measure, a level, and the pen you see above.  However, my artistic abilities (extremely limited as they are) weren't up to the task of trying to freehand letters to the proper scale, so I headed back upstairs to print those out on the computer in the actual size we planned to use.

Templates attached!

The next step was to start putting holes in the board for the EL wire.  While the EL wire we purchased allows you to cut and splice it, if it's not hooked up to the power source (two AA batteries), it won't light.  Thus, we figured the easiest way to make the sign look clean was to outline the templates on the front of the sign and secure the bends and whatnot with tape, passing the wire through holes in the board to move onto the next shape.  The back of the sign essentially looks like this:

Except less artsy.

Time to start!

My calculation sheet with the EL wire,
glowing bright.

We thought about using a drill bit to make the holes in the board, and that probably would have been easy, but I wanted to stay in the A/C in front of the football game and I figured curious dogs + power drills were a bad idea.  Instead, I decided to go manual and just use a hammer and a 2" nail.  To make a riser for the board (so I didn't put nail holes in the ottoman), I grabbed some of our cookbooks.  Sadly for Rick Bayless, his didn't emerge unscathed:

Hee!  Oops!

Eventually, I finished the first line of the sign before running out of EL wire.  Another order was promptly placed through Amazon, so the rest would be coming soon.  In the meantime, the sign was halfway done:

Coming along!

Thanks to the wonder that is Amazon Prime, the second piece of wire arrived on Monday, and I was able to finish things up while brewing a new batch of beer.  The sign seemed a little bare on the corner, so when Jake (who was over at the time helping Chris test out his new table saw) suggested a skull and crossbones logo, I thought it was an excellent idea.  

Behold, the finished product!

Ta da!

Well, almost finished.  We still need to use the actual drill to put some decent sized (size of a nickel or quarter or something) in each corner, so we can attach rope/line to the sign for hanging/securing.  Other than that, though, I think we're done here!

Later!

Amy