I'm a woodworker primarily, so I decided to start with what I know best. Last summer I built a 4-sided plywood box and fixed some curly maple veneer to the sides. The surface was especially tricky. I tried to stretch the veneer over the front like a drum initially, which worked well at first. The plan is to use a rooted amazon fire tablet to start; I downloaded a magic mirror app to test the concept. The display at maximum brightness shone through clearly, and the only times I couldn't see the letters was in direct sunlight. 

After shoving the tablet in and out a few times the veneer cracked, and a couple days later I noticed the wood start to stretch and warp in the humidity.

I'm also not a huge fan of the way you can see the backlight shining through the edges where the text isn't. A dot matrix display would probably better, but I definitely don't have the arduino and programming chops to do that yet.