I'm wanting to make one of the LEDs from Detroit: Become Human. I've found that the best actual LEDs to use for this is the Adafruit Neopixel Nano 2020. However, these are 2mm by 2mm surface-mount LEDs and have very small soldering pads, so after looking at a diagram I decided it was probably impossible to hand-solder wires to them (soldering wires was my first thought as PCBs might be a little hard to get where I live). Anyways, I figured if that wouldn't work, I could try using a PCB cut in the ring shape. The idea was to get a PCB and stencil, put solder paste across PCB pads, mount LEDs with tweezers, and heat gun to solder. However, I've heard on a few forum posts that the plastic around the actual LED will melt fairly easily, so I'm concerned that using hot air to solder will ruin the LEDs. My only other idea was to get a stencil in the shape of the LED pads, put solder paste on the LEDs themselves, place wires into the paste, and then heatgun again (but from underneath, of course). I don't have any idea if this would work or not, though.
Would any of these ideas work and/or what other ways could I solder these LEDs together?
