Be sure to get the BATTERY-OPERATED ones and not the plug!!

Moving on with the steps.

Step 1

Grab a piece of paper and draw out the characters. Hangeul was pretty easy as it didn't take up much space horizontally. Yours might differ based on your writing and the wording.

I write out free-handedly first and later traced it back with a ruler. You can even print out the wordings if you want to save time. Just be sure to do a proper size estimation to suit your need.

Step 2

Cut the board according to your liking. Check with the concert organiser on the size of banner that they allow to bring in. Mine was around A3 a.k.a the size of two A4 papers. 

Step 3

Cut the characters and arrange them on the board.

Step 4

Place a marking for where the bulbs are gonna go. I suggest you roughly sketch it out first before buying the LEDs, so you would have a better idea when it comes to this step. Think of how many LEDs are exactly needed. Be sure that the LEDs form the letters, emphasis on edges rather than straight lines.

Step 5 

Punch holes. I suggest punching hole in them before you actually glue the letters. I made a mistake of gluing them on the board first and tried poking them using a pen directly. I almost ruin the paper when I tried pushing through the LED.  

Once you punched all the holes, you may poke the holes using a pen - preferably ball pen, to insert the LEDs.

Step 6

After poking through all the holes, push in all the LEDs through them one by one. It shall then look like this.

As you can see, the LEDs aren't really staying in place.

Step 7

So the next step is to use a hot glue gun to secure them into place. Hold the stems straight up while doing this to ensure they are not bended. Be careful when using a hot glue gun and make sure the glue is dry before moving on to the next bulb.

After doing this, you can group the wires and tape them together so they won't look so messy. You could later tape the battery box behind the board too.

Step 8 

We are almost done! You obviously wouldn't want your banner to look so plain right? So the last step is to paint them. I painted my base black and the papers half red, half white. I needed to paint them as I didn't exactly erase the pencil traces. Not that anyone notices, but oh well.

As you can see, I also painted half of the LED with red paint to match with the paper. I used a mere watercolour and had to repaint them a couple of times. I also used a red sharpie, though it didn't help much. It would be better to get a red LED from the start but using a white light definitely gave me an option to do this and undo it. Notice the 'ㅂ' having some leftover paint due to my attempt on painting them red too, before realising it was better off white lol.

Result

Here is the result! I am very happy with how it turned out. It's very simple but it really stands out and definitely met my expectation. It was also really fun to make. Maybe bcos I was also very excited for the concert hehe.

Extra tips

It gets hot outside of the venue and I noticed the banner was practically burning from it. I suggest to keep it wrap with a towel or keep it inside a cooler bag. I literally saw someone making the banner out of a styrofoam box, which practically acted as an insulator during the hot day. What a genius! But do whatever is convenient for you. Mine literally was left burning with the battery already placed inside, and no harm was done. So be like me and take risk or be smarter and think of a way...

I hope this has been helpful for any of you who is also interested on making this for your upcoming concert. Truly hope you will get noticed too. Chanwoo noticed my banner and waved my way during the concert (might not be at me also though, but that was not the point) so hope you will have fun with it as much as it was for me. All the best!!

Dropping by,

Melynn.