DIY ICE ICE NEON[:]

Hello my darlings!

I hope that this theme week still makes your mouth water! There won’t be a Happy Friday today, I’m holding onto a sugary sweet outfit to top off the week on Sunday! Today we’re going to do a neon light ice cream DIY! I’ve wanted to make this for a while but I didn’t want to do any projects with intense electric work. Technology has made creating a neon effect available to everyone, not like LEDs that are little lights every 5 cm, this is more of an authentic retro neon light like everyone loves! Hallelujah for all DIY fans! After sifting through information online, our Charlotte found the holy grail of lighting at Dream Neon. Besides having really easy to use fluorescents, their team is super nice and will point you in the right direction if you have any questions! So let’s get started, go wild! I can’t wait to see your homemade neon lights! Hugs and kisses and see you tomorrow... Simoné will tell you where to find the best ice cream in town.

For this DIY you’ll need:

The ice cream pattern, download here
Flexible neon lights, about 3m to make the entire ice cream, as well as a power cord and a connector jack (we found everything at Dream Néon),
Tie wrap
Tape
Scissors
A good box cutter
A punch
Electrician’s screwdriver
Electrician’s tape, white
Glue
Wire cutters
Large sheet of foamcore cardboard (A0 format)
65x50 cm sheets of colored paper

To start off, download and print the pattern for the ice cream, put together the different pages using the junction lines that overlap.

Now cutout the different parts of your ice cream and start to trace them on the paper.

Once you’ve traced everything, cut out the different colors and glue them on top of each other.

Do the same for the cone! As you can see, we put two different versions of the cone online for you (the waffle cone will take a little longer to cut out). If you want to do the striped version, you just need to cut out strips of paper 3 cm wide and place them diagonally.

Once your paper ice cream is put together, grab your best box cutter and trace the outline! (TaDa #1!)

Let’s move on to the neon light! The flexible fluorescent can be cut every 4 cm (as show by a little scissor mark). Using the box cutter, make a cut along the neon light so you can take out the two power cords.

Twist the wires around each other so that they aren’t pointed every which way and start to place the neon light on the ice cream.

While doing this, you can estimate how long you’ll need it to be and cut off the extra neon. We chose to do the top of the ice cream using blue neon, that’s why we started the light there, so that it would line up with the cone. Using your punch, make a hole in the foamcore cardboard on each side of the neon tube!

Slide a tie wrap in the holes. Continue winding the light along your ice cream, keeping it in place using the tie wraps on the back of the cardboard. Put them in strategic spots: along the curves.

Tada #2! Let’s move on to the meeting of the cone, unwrap the neon wires as shown before and roll the wires of the two neons together to make contact. Twist them between each other (be careful to correctly put the neons in the same direction so that the + terminal is with the second light’s + terminal).

Once the wires are connected, hold it together with electrician’s tape, or Gaffer tape! Continue lining the light all along the waffle cone.

As for the ends, unwrap the wires so you can attach the power cord, slide on the connector jack (there’s also a +/, if it doesn’t work one way, reverse the wires)! Slide on the power cord and TaDa!