So finally my boards got through customs (I think they wondered what it is about that many purple envelopes sent to me). On there I soldered a transistor, a 74hc595 shift register, 8 blue LEDs and some resistors. I mixed up Latch and Clock the first time testing and got scared, checked the circuit again and found my easy to fix bug - and it worked! 

I hope it is noticeable; I got some wire mesh for the looks as well :) The orange lost some red tones again in the picture, but I guess nixies do to... now I only need to solder 3 more, work out the ds1307 and some software and power things and I build myself a fancy clock :)