I have the solution to the lighting problem.

Professional lighting gels. No need to worry about ghetto color layer action.



It's sold in sheets of 20" x 24". Each sheet is only a couple bucks, and could do a crapload of clusters. They also sell "diffusion" filters, which should even out the lighting rather well.


I'd use an entire diffusion gel (cut to shape) as a backing sheet and attach bits of colored gel to it.

http://www.rosco.com/main.html

Go to products, then filters, then roscolux.