The panel is bordered with 1x4" boards with a decorative edge routed on both the frame and side panels.  Another frame of 1x2" boards is behind that, with one brace across the center of the panel.  The panel itself is made of a very lightweight material for bulletin boards.  This helped keep the overall  weight of the project around 40 lbs.  To work on the panel, I added temporary "feet" to keep the frame  off the floor, and a couple of legs at the top to steady it with rope at the ceiling.  This let me add the stars and paint the panel in a comfortable working position.

You can see that I snagged the Elmer's glue from my kid's school supplies and found this worked well for securing the filaments on the back of the panel.

I finally had to drill to get holes large enough for the 1mm filaments.  The needles penetrated the bulletin board material quite easily with even less back damage than drilling. 

Having all of the filaments in the scrap piece made gathering them up in a bundle at the end very easy.

Following the Fiber Optic Store recommendations, I left each filament at least an inch long on the front of the panel, then painted the panel and filaments black. 

After two coats of paint and letting the panel dry overnight, I used finger nail clippers to cut the filaments to about 1/4" inch.

I would have loved to use one of the Fiber Optic Stores illuminators (and maybe I'll snag one in the future), but remember my budget.  A friend had bought one of those mini pre-lit fiber optic Christmas trees for about $20, and let me buy the illuminator and color wheel from it.  Since this panel is the prototype and is going in my son's room, the unrealistic colors were actually ideal.