HOLLYWOOD sign

Last year's Hollywood Halloween marked my first in my very own house. As such, decorating was the most fun ever - while of course I didn't want to damage anything, it was so nice to know that I didn't have to fear a landlord if anything were to happen.

As such, I wanted to go bigger and better than ever before. And the "Hollywood" sign seemed a necessity.

I picked up white sheets of foam core when it was on sale at Michaels (every once in a while you can catch it for $1 instead of $2.79). I blocked out the letters to basically fill an entire sheet, starting with the "H" made that pretty easy. Another plus was that once I did the first "O" and "L" I just traced their duplicates, so it went pretty smoothly. Cutting foam core is a little tricky without the right tools, but since these were to be outside and viewed from afar, I didn't sweat the small rumples and gouges.

I went through several ideas for the "stakes" but really didn't want to spend any more money on the project, so I recycled some small wire garden fencing I had bought to steak down homemade garage sale signs the summer before. It was similar to this stuff but white, and I got it at Menards, like 6 pieces for $2 or something.

It took some effort to hatchet the sections apart (they were too wide to use a whole one on each letter without showing, plus I needed more than I had, so I cut them into 3 pieces each). I used simple clear tape to secure the pieces of "fence" with 2 stakes to each letter (2 for the W).

They worked! If it had been windy we might have been chasing them around the neighborhood, but it was calm and they stayed in line. Though it was dark when people started showing up, I think the bright of the white still stood out. Never did find out what the neighbors thought :)