im enjoying playing with WLED
i design pcbs for my projects and just put this together
5 pcbs with all components works out about £5 per board
so much easier 
I was surprised how easy and cheap it was to get PCBs made up.
My first PCB, where I managed to swap the +/- labels in places and selected a data pin for WLED that causes the D1 Mini to not boot.
And my latest, which I just ordered, probably done something wrong again but they are cheap.
Probably much to much for WLED but wanted to use it for ESPhome sensors etc as well.
yes ive been enjoying designing and using my own boards
dirt cheap to get made and if you buy the components in 10’s even cheaper in the long run
This is the previous version of my ESP-M2 (ESP8266) based board in USB stick form factor. (in actuality, I don’t populate the header pins). I find USB power can drive several hundred pixels of nightime holiday lighting without issue. It has an IR receiver and an WS2812B indicator light (which isn’t much use for WLED as yet).
And here is a custom lighting element I use (also previous version), a aluminium PCB, because I was worried about heat, needlessly it seems.
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Very nice and cheep
you shoudt go for a levelshifter as of 12V stripes for more bigger and outdoor projekts its just a Inverter chip to be added 4channel is good for the 99.9% of projekts
ive tried some surface soldering
fed up of picking the small bits off the floor
maybe i dont need as much wind power 
@Mallettron I use a heating plate. You place the PCBs on it and just watch for the solder paste to melt, maybe push a component a bit to help it settle.
Its easy to make one from an aluminum heating plate, a PID temperature controller with SSR, and a project box (all from AliExpress). The plate is very very handy. I can’t imagine doing without it.
Heat gun is just for bigger stuff or when you need to localize the heat.
But even just picking up the parts with tweezers, they can slip and fly to some unknown location, which is very annoying. Actually, now I mention it, those wax pencils that fingernail artists etc. use to pick up jewels work, maybe even better for picking up small SMD components. That’s what I used for the LED disks, picking the 5050s up directly from the tape and pushing them into the paste you place on the PCB. Fast, once you get used to it.
thanks for the info
i do have a heating plate for phone screens, maybe ill give it atry
its nice to see people designing and producing their own boards
It’s fun isn’t it 
You get the circuits plus something mechanical. I’ve been at it a year.
BTW, do you know about FlexyPins? They allow you to put clips on your PCBs to temporarily mount modules with casselated pins (minimum pitch of 1.27mm). Handy for making your own adapter boards for breadboarding; I’ve started to add decoupling capacitors to them as well.