How to Make Fake Fire

Fires can be dangerous and can get out of control, but this isn't a concern when you make fake fire. You can actually make a great DIY fake fire for Halloween, and although it does not get hot and burn people, it can really add a lot to your holiday decorations. You can set the fake fire in an area by itself or add it to a scary witch's cauldron or alongside some other Halloween décor.

You can create a dancing flame effect with silk material, a fan and some other supplies. Get a large, empty coffee can and remove the bottom with a can opener. Put it on the ground and insert a piece of wood or something else on which you can stand a small computer fan. Make a few holes in the top part of the can with a drill or a metal hole puncher and tie pieces of orange silk material through it and knot the ends. If you don't have orange silk, you can use cut-up plastic trash bags or cellophane.

Point the fan toward it and turn it on. You can also place some orange and red light bulbs nearby to shine on the material if it is white. Remember that the flames should be right over the fan in order to blow the material upward. To make your DIY fake fire seem even more realistic, play a recorded sound of a crackling fire nearby. You can also use a fog machine to create some smoke by your fire.

Instead of a campfire, you might want to create fake fire torches to decorate your home or carry around with you on Halloween. You can do this with bamboo tiki torches, LED flickering tea lights, cellophane and a bit of ingenuity. Wrap the outside of the tea light with orange duct tape twice and build up the tape until you have a tube around it. Remove the wick from inside the torch and use more tape to attach the tea light to the inside of the torch.

For the flames, you will need red, orange and yellow cellophane cut into rectangles. Using strong double-sided tape, attach the cellophane rectangles around the torch and onto the tea light tube. Keep adding layers until the duct tape is covered. Then, you can cut the top parts into triangles and points. When you are finished, turn on the tea light in the middle of the torch and voila – you have a fake fire.

It is also easy to make a DIY fake fire using paper towel rolls and tissue paper. Cut about a third off the towel rolls so they won't look so long and thin. You can then draw on them with brown markers to make them look more like wood.

Then, cut out pieces of orange and yellow tissue paper and make the ends look ragged. Stack the rolls to look like logs, glue them together to keep them in place and glue on the tissue paper flames.