Depends on the quality of the board you wanna get (different materials), the layers you need (usually only one layer though, more is very expensive), the amount of sides, solder masking, tooling, the amount and size of tracks (though only sometimes, depends on how they are made), etc...
Making them yourself is very possible, but it involves some craftmanship, a lot of patience and some chemical know-how (or a very good
how-to book would do too), and above all a lot of trial and error...
Or you could get them made by companies which make prototype boards in very small quantities for you, like
http://www.eurocircuits.com/ or
http://www.pcb-pool.com/. They are still relative cheap and you don't need to bother with all the labor, burns, sweat, toxic stuff, and trials gone wrong...
eg: a double sided board of 100mmx160mm, plated through and partial hot air levelling and tooling (which is already more than what you'll ever need if you're a beginner), is €50 according to
PCB-Pool. But a single sided 100x100mm, not plated through, not tooled, not masked, plain and simple, is just around 25 euros. For that kind of money I cba to try and make one myself tbh.
See google "make PCB boards" for tons of info. Also, the local libary is a gold mine of information regarding this
ancient hobby.
PS: Note that an experiment board (like the one Mike is using) can be bought very cheap in almost all local electronic shops* as kits, including needed materials and components to make your own experiments, just as Mike did.
* that is electronic shops, thus not electricity shops (although some have them) or household equipment shops. But the kind of shops were you go to buy a bunch of resistors and transistors and those kind of things...