@kat i can teach you with no payment involved, if you like
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@Felthry hell yes

@kat so first of all, which do you want: push the button to toggle between on and off, or hold down the button for light and release it for no light
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@Felthry uhhh the first one

@kat that one's a little more complicated but can make it work in one of two ways:
- normal tactile dome button (think those really cheap remote controls you get with cheap unbranded stuff from ebay/amazon), plus some active circuitry that will get moderately complicated
- slightly more expensive, but nicer-feeling, push-on-push-off toggle button with no additional components

I would suggest the latter, but it's up to you
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@Felthry either way works

@kat okay so here's a cheap little button you can use https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nte-electronics-inc/54-125-2/11645665

Designed to be panel-mounted so you just need a hole of the appropriate dimensions and access to both sides of the panel to install it; if this is a problem there are ones that can be installed from one side only out there too

what you need to do is just wire up the button, the LED, the battery, and an appropriately-chosen resistor in series, it's as simple as that--just make sure the LED polarity is right
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@kat if you can tell me what LED you're planning to use i can help you figure out an appropriate resistor
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@Felthry okay we've skipped past the part i'm needing to learn where i don't know what parts to use or what order they go in or what the circuit looks like

@kat The thing about a series circuit is that the order the things go in doesn't matter. the circuit itself looks like this, though. are you familiar with what the symbols mean?
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@Felthry okay we're skipping past "which bits do you need to wire together" and into schematics and picking out specific resistor ratings, i might just be too stupid for this tbh

@kat sorry! you're not, i'm just really bad at knowing what things are and aren't common knowledge
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@kat you just need a wire from one side of the battery or batteries to one side of the switch, from the switch to a resistor, from the resistor to the LED, and from the LED back to the battery. the order of things does not matter, all that matters is that the LED is the right way around with respect to the battery (the long leg of the LED should be towards the positive side of the battery)

the resistance needed depends on what battery voltage and what LED you're using
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@Felthry okay rad, so literally just a battery, resistor, and a couple LEDs in series would be fine?

@kat again depends on the battery voltage! each LED you add in series will require another 2-4 volts depending on what color LED it is, so you'll need a higher voltage for more LEDs in series
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