LED Campfire Prop

Having a campfire is a tradition that you want when camping
with Scouts or youth organizations, but it is not always possible. Sometimes when you go camping, a real campfire is not allowed to the fire danger at the time. This instructable is how to make a realistic fake campfire that you can take with you and enjoy. Because it is not real, you can use this in a building where we have used it for the ambiance and ceremonies.

The cost is under $10 for the whole thing.

Parts:

• Battery powered Christmas LED lights. 2 or three strands of red, white, yellow. You can use more if you want a brighter camp fire.
• Red Cellophane. The type of transparent red plastic used to wrap flower arrangements.
• Sticks of wood about 15" long. They do not need to be straight, odd shapes can add distinction to the fire.
• 3" grabber screws.
• Black, white, and orange paint
• Spray on varnish
• 24"square piece of wood for to mount the campfire on.

Tools

• Torch
• Cordless screwdriver

Arrange the wood into a campfire shape. I made mine in a log cabin shape, but you can
do a teepee shape if you like. Screw the pieces together to hold it together. I can grab mine by the top log to haul it around.

Taking the torch, burn the wood to make it look like it is
burned wood. When the wood is done and cold, it will be black. You can use a little red, yellow, or white paint to add emphasis to the wood to look like burning coals. Do not use a lot. The paint emphasis will only been seen when the lights are on.

Take the red cellophane and crumble it up into a ball. Then unravel it and add the light strands to the ball, mixing all the strands together. Keep the battery packs out of the ball so you can turn them on and off. You will want to mix them together because some of the strands you will want in flashing mode and some you will want to stay on all the time. In this picture, I only used two small strands. MY larger campfire was being used by a girls group for an indoor event.

Place the ball of cellophane and lights in the campfire and place it on the 24" piece of wood used for the stand