Spent 2 weeks chasing a glow effect, turns out it was a box-shadow stacking trick

Last month I was trying to make this neon sign flicker effect for a CSS art piece and nothing looked right. Kept messing with filter blur and blend modes for like 14 days. Then I saw this codepen from 3 years ago where someone stacked like 5 box-shadows with different colors and spread values. Tried it and boom, instant glow that actually feels organic. The trick is layering small tight shadows inside bigger soft ones. Anyone else have a similar moment where the answer was way simpler than what you were overthinking?

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paul_burns20h ago

Blow my mind how many hours I've wasted reinventing something that was just sitting there on CodePen all along... guess that's the real glow-up, learning to search before you build.