Cutting this one close, but really had fun with this one! Like all good projects, this one started with my wife on pintrest trying to find something to put on our daughters playroom wall. After a bit of napkin sketching and figuring out rough sizing, it was time to get it vectorized and scaled properly for the space.
Once we got that sorted, the nesting optimization madness began, I ended up begin able to get everything on 2 24x48 sheets of MDF with a little leftover for whatever comes next. We got them all cut out with a roughing pass with a 1/4 downcut and then a finishing past with a 1/8 upcut for the smaller corners.
After it was all cut out, it was time to clean up the fuzzies and get rid of any leftovers of the holding tabs. The biggest downside Ive got with MDF is its ability to soak up paint like a sponge. This time I tried giving all the faces and edges a seal of shellac before they got their color coats. Ended up doing 3 coats of it with a foam brush and smoothing it all out with steel wool between coats.
Then the fun part, color! It was a bit tricky trying to make a proper gradient palette when ordering online but Montana paints came in for the win. Went on smooth and with some awesome vibrant colors. Once all the pieces had 3 coats of color & a chance to dry, I had to figure out how I wanted to mount them on the wall. I really wanted to find an easy and invisible solution that didn’t have me measuring for hours.
Enter pushpins. I cut off the heads of some finishing nails, drilled two holes per letter/piece and then with a drop of superglue, we had some glorified push pins 
. Its a beautiful thing when something simple works the first time!
With our sketch reference pulled up and a guideline for the base of the letters we were able to get the whole thing hung up in ~5 minutes. I couldn’t have been happier with how it came out, and my wife was in love with how it ended up finishing up the playroom. But something still felt missing…
And well Ive never been known to be able to leave something alone. Enter COB Led strips! I had just found a pretty good deal on ~45ft of pink strips that would be perfect for this. Got it all ordered up and then it was time to wait… Two rolls made it on friday, and then it was on.
Okay, looking good I think I’ve figured out a flow, this is going to be easy!
Ohhh yesss, this is exactly what I was hoping for!
And then about here is where I started contemplating all my life decisions pretty heavily. But no, its gonna be worth it for sure. All these curved letters with led strips that dont bend well and need to be cut and resoldered every 2 inches is totally gonna be worth it. Now if only the other roll would show up so we could get everything finished…
Spoiler alert, that roll is still missing last seen somewhere in California (We’re on the east coast), but you know what? It looks awesome and I’m super happy with how it came out. It really transforms the room when its dark!
Heres to hoping that 3rd roll shows up sometime soon, or any of the additional 3 I ended up ordering to try and get it all here in time 
.