Day wot? - The Thought Bubble

What I want:

Buttons light up when pressed
Acrylic/Felt top
Sound reactive LED's
LED lit acrylic signage like effect

To start, what I did was download the files with the properly scaled arcade controller from this guy's blog (CTRL + F the link to find the password). It's an interesting read, and a pretty easy way to get around an Arduino micro controller if you're tight on budget and have an old mouse and controller (or a keyboard works as well) lying around.

Since the files when put together are scaled for 60mm buttons, I used Photoshop to scale the entire controller down to 44mm buttons (as those were the size I wanted to buy). Scaling with Photoshop isn't all that difficult. After scaling to proper sizes, I created the template design for what I wanted to sand blast as my design for the acrylic signage effect:

Not too shabby for about 10 minutes messing around in Photoshop

So I have the "vision" of how I want my controller to work... now how exactly am I going to make it? Dunno.

Pre-build Checklist:

What measurements:
-Length/Height of the frame
-Length/Height of components
-Size of the panel/scaling the controller
-Size of buttons
-Size of holes that need to be drilled

How to's:
-How to build a wooden box
-How to cut acrylic panels
-How to drill acrylic panels
-How to program an Adruino
-How to electric prototype and... wire things
-How to solder

(Basically how to do everything)