"Dabbling with LEDs" is an excellent gateway to a "Piled Higher & Deeper in School-of-Hard-Knocks Electrical Engineering. Or can feel that way the more a person reads up on such things.
Mr White, I strongly recommend you now invest the tiny sums wanted to get the LED strip light kits--that is, unless you enjoy having too many options and a desktop cluttered with snipped wires and insulation and the long-lingering smell of soldering tools :-)
In full fairness, though, a 8-10m roll of lights, with an emitter every 50mm or so cam be bought for $30-40. The emitters are a tiny chip with an array of microscopicc LEDs, which emit color based on voltage differentials. The sort of thing that a capacitor firing into a range of resistors would make a rainbow effect in the emitter. Or, to just use them as is (they are meant to be applied under shelves or wall cabinets using double-stick tape ad have expected lifespans of 5-10,000 hours on in-spec voltages.
Yeah, I may have over-thought this, and put the ideas away in the Use Later scrap book with wiring to one pedestal bolt for positive, and to another for negative, the better to use motion detection, and/or darkness switching to power the lighting.