Card: Christmas - Lightbulb

This card has to be my all time favorite (so far) of the different Christmas cards I've made.  It's fun to look at them when they're done and I have a lot of fun making them.

Inspiration:  I had made the candle card from the previous post the year before and still wanted to do something within the realm of light.  I had also started playing with alphabets and was doing more calligraphy again.  I thought about doing a string of lights (a concept I might still come back to) but didn't want to create or cut out really small pieces.  Most modern Christmas tree lights are pretty small, but I remember helping a neighbor decorate his family's tree with larger (and more fragile) lights kind of the like the one I used in this card.

How I Make Them:  I did this one a little different.  I actually made my first card with this idea and then took it apart to make templates out of cardstock so I could make a bunch of them.  I started with the oval (skinny egg) shaped light bulb (the image above shows it in a light green, I did the first one in neon yellow).  Then I cut out something that I hoped looked like the socket part of a lightbulb (originally in a shiny silver but I later opted to do this in black).  I had glued those down to the card and then drew a cord with black gel pen (initially single strand) that spellout out Merry Christmas (missing the dot on the letter "i") in cursive.  I went back and added the second strand before and after the words (which does make it look a little more realistic).  Then I cut out a plug (originally in shiny silver again but later opted to do part in black with the prongs in shiny silver) and glued that to the end of the cord.  I thought it would look more electrifying if I made the dot on the letter "i" look like a flame or a spark using gel glitter pens.  I leave the inside of this card blank so I can personalize the message for each recipient.

Alternatives:

• I switched for a silvery socket and an all silvery plug to using black with just a little silver for the plug's prongs, mostly because I thought the lightbulb color stood out better than way.
• There's still the idea of spelling out Merry Christmas using a strand of more modern looking Christmas tree lights (though I think I've seen that on commercially sold cards before).