Neon Light Column Decoration

One of my favorite party catalogs to peruse during my "free" time (which means during the time I'm sitting and waiting to pick up kids from practice) is the company Shindigz.  I love the party products and fun ideas they come up with, so when I saw these Luminescent columns I became VERY envious...

but the price tag of $85.00 each nearly choked me...especially when I decided I wanted 4 of them for my daughter's party.

So I decided to make my own.

I started with an embroidery hoop, some PVC pipe from around the house, a strand of Christmas lights, and 2 yards of fabric.

I couldn't find the right type of PVC joint that I wanted, so I had to create my own.  So I took a 4 part cross joining piece and a coupling piece and tried to glue it together.  My glue didn't work too well (not sure why), so we ended up drilling a screw into it at an angle to keep it still.

I'm sure part of the problem is that I waited until the day before the party to try this and was too impatient for the glue to dry, but the screw made it more secure so it worked out good.

(UPDATE: For the other 3 columns that I made, I hot glued the top piece on and then pushed E-6000 glue into the cracks and waited.  It worked GREAT!)

Then I took 8 inch pieces of PVC pipe that I have around the house,  (my kids use PVC pipe pieces cut into different lengths as "tinker toys")  and put them into the cross pieces so they are sticking out at the top.

I sewed a pocket on one edge of neon green fabric and then down the long edge to create a circle with my fabric.  I threaded my embroidery hoop through the pocket so I had a long column of fabric.

Using a 7 foot long piece of pipe from my photo booth backdrop stash, I covered it with a strand of large white Christmas lights.

Lastly I took my fabric hoop and threaded it up the PVC pipe and over the pieces on the cross to rest.  I plan to place these on the edge of our dance floor at the party for a pretty fun, cool effect.