Nowadays, there you can buy neon* signs of any emoji from Temu. For a price, you can even get custom signs made in any shape. But it turns out you don’t need to pay an arm and a leg, you can just make custom fake-neon signs for cheap at home! All you need is some backing material (I used MDF), a way to cut it (e.g. laser cutter or CNC router), some flexible silicone “neon” LED strips, and some zip ties.

*fake neon, actually LED strips with a bead of silicone for diffusing the light; the low power of the LEDs makes it even better for running it from a battery bank at a festival.

I made a dozen of these neon gourds as gifts for my friends at Burning Man in 2025 to help find each other in the dark. Our whole camp was gourd-themed, including constructing a huge wooden gourd that we burned at the end of the event.

To make these, I first sketched a design on some scrap MDF and then cut it with a jigsaw, and strapped an LED strip to it. Once I was happy with the shape, I sketched it in Onshape and had a dozen cut out of MDF, which I painted black.

Because these were 12V LED strips, I bought some cheap boost converter modules, and I soldered them onto the strips along with a power button and a USB connector (to run the strips from USB battery banks).