Finally, my first Magic the Gathering shadowbox! I was excited about this project, especially because the commissioner wanted LED integration as well. I decided to put 3 lights in this one, but this time integrated with the artwork, on the two back flames and in the dragon's mouth. This one was a first as well, as my LED integrations so far usually use them for backlighting or spotlights.
Started, as usual, with the frame. MTG cardboard stock is interestingly thicker than the Yu-Gi-Oh! one. I broke two blade tips while cutting the pieces, but the end result is also sturdier than my usual pieces.
As the MTG card text is shorter and uses a larger font size than Yu-Gi-Oh!, I decided to also engrave the text, which is something that I love how it looks, but never got a chance for it.
The finished frame looks pretty cool, but I feel I added a bit too much depth underneath the two text bars (title & type).
The battery drawer went very smooth this time, and I got it exactly how I wanted it!
Next up I started cutting out the pieces and processing them, which was pretty straightforward, as the artwork on this card is not really complex.
And now started a really frustrating part of the session 😅. I initially decided on routing wires through the back of the cards and then routing them from each LED to the next, to achieve the parallel wiring. However, this quickly proved to be both hard to do, as the wires were very hard to hide, along with hiding the LEDs, and ineffective, as the wiring was unreliable and the LEDs were not staying lighted up.
In this situations it's kind of hard to troubleshoot, so I instead decided to disassemble everything and try a different approach. I made holes for the LED legs all the way through the card to the bottom, glued them, and then finished the wiring on the back. This allowed me to use minimal space for the LEDs and the wiring. However, this method had it's downsides as well, as it was very hard to puncture all the layers of the card all the way to the back.
