ke5frf: You may be right, but there was a reason I wrote what I wrote.
I have a friend who is also very passionate about assembling electronics gadgets. His day job is as an orthodontist, and a good one. He does not want to learn the working details behind the things he assembles, he is only very good with his hands and is thrilled to build something and watching it operate. Therefore he purchases kits.
To build a LED board to simply tinker with, there are plenty of LED drive kits, this is only one of them,
SparkFun Electronics - 7-Segment Controller Kit - Main
The original poster on the other hand, wants to "learn", and he implies he is some sort of a technical student. Therefore, in this case, one needs "patience, study and time" as blueroomelectronics mentioned.
I had originally planned to make a Football analogy, but I don't know if the original poster is familiar with Rugby, Soccer or other sport, so I decided to go for boxing.