Christmas Lights Advice

I just finished a quick article that covers the two most common reasons that mini lights fail.

Don’t send last season’s lights to the junk heap without trying a couple of quick tips to get them working. It’s a great way to use a resource a little longer and stretch you decorating dollars.

Here is a taste of the article:

Everyone has had problems from time to time with their mini lights – and since more folks are using them for decorating all year for parties, weddings, and Holidays – like Valentines and Halloween – it’s handy to have a few tips for getting every last hour that you can out of your light sets. (And who could stand to stretch a dollar.)

Let’s say that it hasn’t been that long since you’ve purchased your sets. You rescued them from moth-ball holiday storage. I hope you wrapped them around a wrapping paper tube or on one of the cool light storage reels that you can pick up at Target so that you don’t have a tangled knotted mess. If you did use the “chuck them” method of storage then you may have to work a bit to untangle them. As you are doing so, make sure that there are not frayed or worn wiring or insulation. If you do see any exposed wiring, discard the set and start fresh.

Here is the complete article on Mini Light Repair Tips

Shellie Gardner
Christmas Lights

Just when I think that I’ve thought about Christmas lights in just about every possible way I see something new and wonder how I missed it.

It’s not earth shattering or anything but in the same way that some folks say pecan and others say pee-can, I just realized a couple of days ago that half the people in the world thing of clear Christmas lights as White. White Christmas lights – who knew?!

Well, I guess it only stands to reason – there’s red, green, blue, etc. – why not white? I guess since they look transparently clear that clear has always been my descriptive word of choice.

So… are uncolored Christmas lights clear… or white? What say you?

Along with “how can bacon burn on only one side” this question won’t mean much to anyone but a few Holiday lighting fanatics and me but I guess I’ll have to be egalitarian and start using both descriptions equally.

So whether they are clear or white…. this color of Christmas light is still the most popular and most versatile and I really must roll out some application posts this week.

Watch for some tips and tricks to be posted soon.

Best regards,

Shellie Gardner
White Christmas Lights

Mini lights have so many uses beyond the Christmas tree. Holidays are the time everyone decorates with lights, but why not break out of tradition a little and use mini lights throughout the year?

Easy Top 10 Ways to Use Mini Lights

1. Decorate Christmas Trees – yes, we know this is a favorite and there’s good reason for that. Mini lights are ideal for mixing and matching the colors on your Christmas tree. New themes to consider: purple mini lights with silver ornaments, blue mini lights with blue/white ornaments, or any other color scheme that appeals to you this year.
2. Wreaths – decorate wreaths not only for Christmas, but also for year round decorating appeal. Use red or pink mini lights for Valentine’s Day, green mini lights for St. Patrick’s Day, etc. Our clear mini lights or frost mini lights are perfect for year round decorating in the home or business.
3. Outdoors – take the mini lights outside! String lights around your patio, deck, and patio umbrella during the summer months for family get-togethers. By all means, decorate with lights during the holidays, but then leave some up following the holiday celebrations. Mini frost lights or any other color that cheers you will look great on your porch, trees, bushes, or outlining your gazebo in the back yard.
4. Birthday Celebrations – what better way to bring sparkle and fun to a birthday party? For younger children, opt for mini lights that compliment their favorite character – blue or red for super-heroes, pink for princesses, etc. Spruce up the party with pink, purple, or teal mini lights for your teenage daughter’s party.
5. Holiday Displays – light up the night in every color by decorating your holiday displays with mini lights. Reindeer come to life outlined with white mini lights. Santa will be jolly outfitted in his traditional red and white colors. The sleigh will simply sparkle with white mini lights. The Nativity crèche outlined with gold or yellow mini lights will have a “heavenly” appearance. The oversized wreath on the side of the garage will be stunning at night when outfitted with mini lights.
6. Gardens/Walkways/Water Features – gardens are a magical place in the evening hours when subtly lit with mini lights. Create the magic by adorning your trellises, arbors, and topiaries with mini lights. Outline walkways or paths through the garden. Water features are especially beautiful when the lights reflect off the water.
7. Halloween – bring together all the creepy, eerie effects of this October holiday with our green, purple, orange, and red mini lights.
8. Dances – transform the inside of your gymnasium, ballroom, or barn with strings and strings of mini lights along the ceiling, outlining doorways, and more.
9. Home – mini lights on the fireplace, in the bathroom, a bedroom, artificial trees, above kitchen cabinets, in dining room hutches, bookshelves, or as garland strung above a large window.
10. Weddings – mini lights everywhere! White mini lights along the ceiling, wrapped around tulle, and anywhere that you want sparkle.

Don’t forget – mini lights just aren’t for Christmas any more!!

Happy Holidays,

Shellie Gardner
Mini Lights

LED icicle bulbs are individual bulbs that plug into a traditional C7 light string.

Here is a video I just shot featuring these bulbs. The are a little pricey but wow! they look great.

They come in 5,7, and 9 inch lengths in either static or animated versions.

So, now you have another choice to make when it comes to planning your Christmas display!!

Shellie Gardner
LED Icicle Bulbs

I’m frequently asked, “So, what’s the difference between residential and commercial led christmas lights and what should I choose?”

LED Christmas lights from HOliday Creations come in two different version. What style you choose depends on your project, installation requirements, availability and your pocketbook.

Standard LED Christmas lights come with a standard male/female plug set and can be connected up to an average of 60 sets in series. These UL rated sets are great for indoor projects, crafts and HOliday decorating. In the mini light versions of these sets – razzberry and strawberry – the LEDs are spaced 4 inches apart and come in 35 and 70 LEDs to the set. Superrazz or G12 residential sets are 6 inchesa apart and the bigger C7 and C9 Sets are spaced 8 inches apart. This 8 inch spacing is one of the biggest differences between residential and commercial C7 and C9 sets because the commercial versions are 12 inches apart.

You can use traditional splitters and extension cords to install your residential light sets.

Residential sets are frequently the best choice is you want to place lighted objects in multi places in a room and sheer number of sets is not an issue.

For external applications and those where flexibility of installation and weather resistance is a high priority, commercial LED Chrsitmas lights might be a better solution for your project. Designed with proprietary 3-wire engineering, Holiday Creation LED light sets can be run up to 125 sets is a single run. If you are looking at C7 or C9 sets which are manufactured with 12 inch spacing, that is an incredible 3125 of LEDs run off a single plug.
Commercial sets have a custome proprietary modified coax connector on each end. Spacer wires, Y’s, T’s, multiple outlet adapters, and 3 different lengths of spacer wires allow you to design a lighting plan that can light over 3000 feet of roofline, plaza, trees, etc with only one plug.

Since commercial SED light sets require a power adapter (that rectifies the incoming voltage waveform to provide reduced flicker output), they generally aren’t a good choice if you need to plug in a bunch of sets in different places since the adapters would add alot of needless expense to your materials list.

Be sure to order a couple more adapters and a few extra spacer wires when ordering your commercial lights so you don’t get caught without that one 12 foot spacer wire that you needed.

Both styles of LED Christmas lights have impact resistant injection molded LED lenses that are weather resistant – just remember you can’t remove the bulbs to customize the color and when one may eventually burn out, you’ll need to compensate for that one LED visually but doubling back during installation.

Considering the pros and cons of the two styles of LED Christmas lights only your ultimate project specifications can determine which specific style of set is right for you. So, as we get closer to the Holiday Season, grab a hot cocoa, sit down with pencil and paper and then you’ll know which choice is the right one for you.

Shellie Gardner
LED Christmas Lights

LED Christmas lights come in 2 colors of white – pure and warm – and you love or hate each shade (so it seems!)

I just grabbed a couple of sets of lights and shot this video – I just installed a backdrop behind my desk 2 days ago and now when I get the urge to put something on film, it’s easy. I’m planning to do some longer more detailed videos soon on crafts, projects and decorating tips soon but sometimes you just need to take a minute to make a point. (So, if a picture is worth a 1000 words, how much is a video worth?)

Best regards and Merry Christmas,
Shellie Gardner
White LED Christmas Lights

I was visiting with a friend today and I made a passing reference to net lights (what a shocker!). She made a little face and complained that net lights were just a little too “uniform” for her. See, in her neighborhood all the hedges are nice and striaght and every Christmas everyone installs their net lights and there are rows after rows of perfect hedges.

Seems my friend is a bit of a rebel. As part of the same conversation, I mentioned pink mini lights and pink C9 lights and the idea that she could have a completely pink house this Christmas made her eyes light up with anticipation. (We were conspiring that she and her daughter could surprise her husband and son with their all pink decor!!)

Well, I had a small solution to her net light concern. Net lights are just the best way to decorate a hedge, hands down. Especially in clear mini lights. Each bulb is laid out in a precise grid and the set takes approximately 30 seconds to install.

If you find all that order disconcerting then try the following: Instead of just one set of net lights, buy two. Throw the first set over the hedge then throw the second set offset by a couple of inches over top of it. The gridlike pattern will be minimized and you’ll have 300 mini lights in a some odd 24 square foot area.

I could see her eyes light up at the prospect of having all the convenience of net lights with the massive over the top look that she always spends hours and hours on ever November. Her words: “I like to wrap and wrap and wrap each branch of the hedge”.

I’m starting to wonder how the hedge manages to withstand all that Christmas lights affection.

If you decide that net lights are not the way to go because you want to do your entire house in purple, pink, teal or yellow (net lights are commonly only manufactured in traditional Christmas colors – red, blue, green, and clear) then here are a couple of tips to help you adorn your shrubs:

1. Since Christmas lights can only be run 3 sets to a single run before you have to use another extension cord, consider choosing the longest strands that you can get your hands on without going overboard. Consider 4 inch spacing since that is the most common and easily accessible distance between mini lights available on a set. For large tree trunks, you might look at 6 inch spacing. I like the sets that have 100 mini lights per string with 4 inch spacing because they give you 33 feet to work with.

2. Make sure your hedges are all trimmed up so that you don’t have pokey branches messing up all your hard work. This advice is strictly for folks in the deep South who don’t experience much winter. Or for our South American readers

3. Roll the lights up like balls of yarn before you begin installation. The principles here are the same as they are for yarn. The sets will stay better organized and you will be less likely to knock a bulb out – which will begin your search for the open socket when half the set refuses to light.

4. Consider installing the lights at night so you can see all your empty spaces and correct as you go.
(Be safe – don’t do this if you live in the hood like my neighborhood used to be 10 years ago. Use your good judgement.)

5. Use a modified figure 8 to install the lights on your greenery. The figure 8 pattern will help disguise irregularities and make holes less likely. Just bob and weave…

Most of all, have fun. Some folks like neat and tidy nets, other like the cacophony of chaos. Pick an all one color theme or go crazy with multi or mix it up – it’s all good and fun at Christmas time.

Best Regards,
Shellie Gardner
Christmas Lights

The 70 foot Christmas tree from the Bitterroot National Forest has been installed and decorated in front of the our nation’s Capitol and the lighting ceremony will be tonight.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Montana’s Governor Brian Schweitzer will be on hand to officiate at tonight’s event. (I think House Speaker Pelosi will be throwing the switch.)

The Capitol Christmas tree has been known alternatively as the Capitol Holiday tree until Congress changed its name back to include the word Christmas.

It is traditionally decorated with scores of Christmas ornaments made by the children who live in the state that donates the tree. Weighing up to several pounds each, they are certainly a sight to see during the day!

Since 2005, the tree has been lit with LED Christmas lights – first, only 10% were converted in 2005 as an experiment then the Christmas lights were converted to 100% LED from 2006 on to take advantage of the 90% greater efficiency of LED Christmas lights vs. the traditional C9’s that had been used for so many years.

This year, the tree is decorated with 1000’s of C9 LED bulbs strung in 14 gauge stringer wire. Using retrofits allowed the Office of the Architect the flexibility to warm up the tree a bit since LEDs throw alot of blue light. The addition of extra warm white, orange and red will do just the trick.

Look out tonight on CNN for coverage of the event – and hopefully it will hit You Tube as well. The Capitol tree is just another wonderful tradition that helps kick off the whole Holiday season.

Now. To decorate our tree….. 1200 mini lights and a score of Owen and Jack’s ornaments.

Merry Christmas,
Shellie Gardner
Christmas Lights

Driving home last night from my son’s violin lessons (an hour away from our home) I was struck by the difference in appearance between “normal” headlights and the new halogen lights that are becoming all the new thing in car headlight technology. I reflected that they perfectly illustrate the differences between cool slash pure slash winter LED Christmas Lights and Warm White LED Christmas lights.

Whether they are sets or bulbs, the whites are in the same category – cool or warm. The cool sets – like the Halogens are sharp and crisp with blue overtones. The warm sets are ….. warmer with yellowish overtones.

The cool white sets look good if you have solar lights that also have that sharp icy look. Quite a bit of the landscaping lighting that you see on the market nowadays has this cooler look so to stay complemetary, it’s nice to know that your Christmas lights won’t have to clash. Pure white LED’s seem to be a prominent choice for commercial applications – both in downtown areas and at large facilities.

Warm white is the color most likely to blend in with traditional mini lights and C7/C9 Christmas light bulbs. There is still limited availability of LED lights in every form of Holiday lighting so if you are going to mix incandescents and LED, warm may be the way to go.

On both style of lights, their warmness or coolness is most noticeable when you hold them up to each other. They both tend to look more neutral but if you put them next to each other or next to their counterpart colors, the visual differences become clear.

As far as popularity, the preference for warm and cool seems to be running 50/50 with strong feelings either way. As it is with all Christmas lights, it’s just a matter of taste

So if you are still on the fence about whether you are a cool or a warm led person, take a drive after dark and oncoming traffic may be able to shed some light on your decision.

Shellie Gardner
White LED Christmas Lights

Christmas revelers love the blinking, colored lights that highlight the holiday season, but come January, their utility bill can turn even the zealous Christmas enthusiast into a Scrooge. What’s more, word on the street is that there are many more “would be” Christmas decorators – if only they knew that their holiday lights wouldn’t break their bank. A Fort Worth company, Christmas Light Source, has come to the rescue by offering a nifty little tool on their website that helps those holiday merrymakers determine the approximate cost of their lighting displays. With the rising costs of, well, just about everything, and with consumers becoming more and more aware of their utility bills, this handy dandy little tool is priceless.

Fort Worth, TX (PRWEB) October 31, 2008 — Christmas revelers love the blinking, colored lights that highlight the holiday season, but come January, their utility bill can turn even the zealous Christmas enthusiast into a Scrooge. What’s more, word on the street is that there are many more “would be” Christmas decorators – if only they knew that their holiday lights wouldn’t break their bank. A Fort Worth company, Christmas Light Source, has come to the rescue by offering a nifty little tool on their website that helps those holiday merrymakers determine the approximate cost of their lighting displays. With the rising costs of, well, just about everything, and with consumers becoming more and more aware of their utility bills, this handy dandy little tool is priceless.

Visitors to the Christmas Lights Electricity Calculator plug in a few numbers such as the number of bulbs/nets they are using, bulb size and bulb type and this tool instantly calculates how much electricity their Christmas lights will use based on their electricity cost per kW/hr. There are also helpful hints available to help consumers decorate in a more energy efficient manner and save a little on their utility bill. It can also help those who are considering holiday lighting decorations by giving them some insight on various types of lighting. It can help them decide what kind of lights would be best for them to use and how many lights to use to keep their utility bill at a manageable level.

Tool users are also treated to some very timely, money saving tips. For instance, they are advised to put their lights on a timer because, “Few Holiday-goers are out and about at 2 am in the morning.” Other money saving, energy saving advice that the site offers include considering LED lights and revising the time for putting up and taking down lights (up in late November and down in early January).

As consumers throughout the nation are feeling the crunch from lay offs to rising costs of living, not to mention increased energy costs, people are becoming more aware of their utility bills – and how to cut corners without doing without. “We thought that this would be a fun but useful tool,” says Shellie Gardner, co-owner of Christmas Light Source. “It does automatically what many folks are asking us about – and much more efficiently!” And we all know when it comes to saving money on utility bills, efficiency is the key!

Christmas Light Source is a one stop shopping source for Christmas lighting needs. From hardware to lights and everything in between, Christmas Light Source has everything for holiday lighting decor as well as tips, tricks and do it yourself projects. For more information, visit their website at Christmas Light Source.