Perler Backlight Experiment

This is the first step toward a bigger idea that's probably not going to work out after all.
I'd been watching a documentary about the notorious Toynbee Tiles and thought I'd start experimenting with text and Perler beads. Trouble is, fonts tend to take up a lot of space when you're dealing with small boards (I have bigger ones, but I'd want to fit a fairly big message onto it). The solution was simple: Braille. Six spaces, two across and three down, either represented by different colors or empty spaces makes for a surprisingly efficient way to fit a lot of text in a small space.

As for the backlighting, well...

The trouble with Perlers is that they have these holes in them. Granted, it's how they fit onto the pegboards and keep from sliding around when you're ironing, but the gaps they create can sometimes make it hard for the eye to decipher the overall image. Sometimes, of course, you can get lucky and have your beads fuse shut, making squares out of round pegs, but that only works if you're either working with something very small or you've got the strength of ten men to press down on your iron.
As a result, when you light it from behind, you don't just see the translucent beads, but you get light coming through the holes of your "background" which makes it stand out less. As such, you have to hold it at an angle to work, hence the slapdash photography here. One solution I'd thought of was taking a piece of black craft foam and cutting out a sort of lattice that would cover up the holes from behind. Trouble is, for it to work effectively, I'd have to cut out the shapes of the individual letters instead of just going line-by-line. If you're going to do that much work, you're better off just cutting the letters into the craft foam and using a gel for the backlighting.

It's a shame because I had a few other ideas for Perlers that would use the backlighting, like an old computer console made as a small box with an LED inside. I might still give it a go, but it'll be a while for me to work out the kinks in the system.