Fritzing

This circuit will allow you to have a chasing led effect.

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This is not the tidiest or smartest incarnation of this circuit, but I offer it here in the hope that it will give somebody a start on their project and they can later share their improvements.

The circuit is easier to follow once you break it down into the separate 'sub-circuits'.

The circuit with the blue wiring is the timer circuit based on the ubiquitous 555 chip. I recommend building it first. You can test it is working by replacing the orange wire with an LED connected to ground. If your circuit is built well it should blink. Turning the little pot with a screwdriver will cause the blink timing to change.

When you are happy remove your test LED and replace it with the orange wire as shown.

Next build the circuit that will switch the LEDs on and off in sequence. This is shown with the yellow wiring to the 4017 IC.

Finally you need to wire the anode your LEDs to the 4017. This is rather messy in my sketch and is shown in green and purple wiring. The cathode of each LED is wired via a single (what a cheapskate you shout!) resistor to ground. You can replace this wiring easily with something neater.

I'd like to close by making you aware that the output sequence on the 4017 does not match the pin number. I found this confusing. The correct pin sequence is: 3,2,4,7,10,1,5,6,9,11.

enjoy!