String of Lights Advent Calendar

I love Elsie Marley, she is always full of greatness!  Her string of lights advent calendar is tops!  When she put this up last year I nearly died!  I never got around to it at that time, but I finally did it this year!  I am soo excited that I got it done!

                                               photo courtesy of Elsie Marley

So here it goes:

I am very happy with the results!  It wasn't difficult, but I did make changes.

Pros: unique, beautiful, easy enough, and fun!  The tedious repetition turned out to be soothing.

Cons: time consuming.

                                             one of my goals is to improve my picture taking skills

What I did:  I folded my felt sheet in quarters (I used craft felt b/c it's what I had and I'm cheap) and traced the bulb pattern.  I then repeated for the other side of the sheet and then sewed just inside the lines on each bulb.  I made about 4 bulbs per sheet.  Her directions say to hand sew the sockets together.  While this may be the prettiest option I loathe handsewing!  Handsew 25 sockets???  No way!  I used hot glue baby!  Took me 5 minutes to make 50 of them (I was making one garland banner and 25 ornaments for the tree).

I took 3 strands of the yard and hooked it under a chair, stretching the yarn out as far as it would go and braided it.  It went rather quickly and easily.  I made a loose braid.  I then repeated with another 3 strands and then wrapped the 2 braids around each other.

                                 see, you can't really see my shortcuts. oh, I do wish I had flipped that seam to the back.

I then took green embroidery floss and put tied the socket to the yarn with the knot on top of the yarn, instead of hidden inside the socket.  You can't really see the knot and it probably saved me another hour of project time.

I put little Christmas activities inside each bulb and hung it on my wall.  We don't have a fireplace, so the wall will have to do!

                                 in the end, I didn't think the bulbs matched the other ornaments, so I improvised.

For the ornaments I lightly stuffed them and hot glued the bulb to the inside of the socket.  To hand I stuck a ornament hanger through the tops of the socket.  Easy Peasy.

                                                          up close look at the ornaments. fun fun!


Next time:  I don't think I'd ever hand sew everything, unless I was making it as a gift.  I won't be making it as a gift. It took a long time to do them, but it was definitely worth it.  The hardest part was being honest and telling everyone that I didn't come up with the idea, someone else did!  Ha ha!  Thank you Elsie!