I've had a lot of fun just drawing them myself on plain copper boards with fine-tipped sharpies. They sell little bottles of the etcher at some Radio Shacks but recently I've stepped up to ordering "Ammonium Persulfate" online and using a laser printer and an iron to make my designs.<p>I guess once you've monkeyed with that a while you might want to step up to something like this. It always seemed expensive and slow to me but I guess if you want to use little surface mount stuff you'd have to.<p>Seems like soldering it all together once you get the boards is the hard part in that scenario though.
While I expect it could take years to get to the level of being able to design an interesting IC, could anyone recommend some good online EE introductory material?