Creating a Fake "campfire"

For my Halloween costume this year, I needed to have a real looking campfire built-in to create the illusion I was outside on a campsite.  

I purchased a battery powered $20 prop cauldron with lights, fan and yellow silk "fire," and sunk it into the base of my costume (a large piece of insulating foam board) by cutting out a circle that was a little smaller than the cauldron circumference.  I then pressed the cauldron through the hole and covered the insulating foam board the cauldron edges with a layer of paper mache to make it look like ground (I use strips of crumbled, wet brown paper bag painted with wallpaper paste for my paper mache).  

Once the paper mache is fully dry, the last step was gluing small branches in a criss-cross pattern around the "fire," as well as adding a few leaves/acorns/small branches around the "ground" surface to really create the illusion of outdoors. Stock up with fresh batteries and you've got a fire!