Transistors never work for me
If what you're doing is putting together an assembly and then testing to see if it works, yes, you're doing something wrong.  Do your build in a left-to-right way, checking what's going on at each stage, and you should be able to see what/if you're doing anything wrong.  Debugging this sort of stuff is a valuable skill, and you'll never learn it if you don't try it.

Especially after you've failed at the build-the-whole-shebang-at-once style, it's time to take on your project in a modular way.  

Start by making sure your powers, grounds, etc., are what they should be and what you think they are.

Then, use an input to mimic your TTL, ONE transistor, and ONE LED.  When you've got that working, hook it up to your 74ls.  If that's still working, now try to add the additional LEDs.

This is PARTICULARY difficult when there's a microcontroller and firmware in between you and your electronics.  In that case, there are some interesting ways to proceed.  The first is to not bother with the microcontroller until you've got the external hardware working.  Among the debugging benefits, this will FORCE you to understand your external hardware and it's interaction with the firmware.  Frankly, this is a level of understanding I think many beginning with the Arduino platform just skip.  That's OK, but they'll need to pick it up later.

An alternative approach is to build yourself a test platform with the microcontroller, which will let you diddle around with what you need to diddle around with easily.  Experienced embedded hardware folks would refer to this as a SANDBOX.  Designing your sandbox properly for a project is almost a full project all by itself, but doing it right will save you time and effort in the long run.

Once your system is working standalone or with your sandbox, then migrate to the final version.