Repeating Images Around an Image

Firstly, sorry about the thread title; I just couldn't come up with anything better.

Here's what I would like help on:

I'm trying to create a border of Christmas lights around a photo (see samlple image below). In opposite corners of the photo are hollies & berries and candycanes. Running down along the sides, and along the top and bottom, I would like to draw a "wire", and then add little lights to it. I already have the different-colored lights as separate files and just need to know if it is possible to "string" the lights along the wire without having to do it manually, creating a quick border. Learning how to do this will also assist me with other similar projects in the future.

Thank you, in advance, for any help you are able to provide.

Regards,
OMMBoy

Probably the easiest way is to create a custom brush. Place 5 or 6 lights in a row as you would like them to appear, draw a selection around them, and choose "Edit - Define Brush". Now pick your brush tool, click the down arrow next to "Brush" in the upper left of the menu bar, and scroll down to the last brush in the list. This should be your "bulb string" brush you just created. Select it, set opacity to 100%, ands click where you would like the bulbs to appear. You can adjust the size as you would with any brush.

You'll have to define a new brush to move vertically up and down the image.

A bazillion thanks, wschwisow! I hadn't checked this thread in a while because nobody seemed to be responding -- perhaps this task was just too difficult?

Anyway, after about a week of no responses I decided to just play around with features of PS7 that I hadn't yet explored. I found the "Define Brush" and used the image of the light bulb I designed as the new brush. Unfortunately, the color image took on whatever foreground color was selected, so that didn't work.

Here's what I did to make it work:

1. Created a green "string" around the border of the picture using the pen tool and Bessier curves and made it a work path, gave it a stroke of 5 pixels, and colored it green.
2. Dragged and dropped multiple copies of each colored light bulb which I created previously onto the picture, rotated and positioned each one appropriately.

Below is the test image I used to get the positioning and layout to my liking (this was last year's Christmas picture). Please ignore the lack of shadow, glow, layering, etc. It's only a test.

Again, thanks for your help! I really do appreciate it! Have a wonderful Holiday!

Regards,
OMMBoy

Nice Work!
Did you use the tuts at DBM?
http://www.designsbymark.com/freetips/ps/pstips.html