Levitating Candles

For Halloween last year, we decorated in a Harry Potter theme.  As part of this, I wanted to have levitating candles.  Because I envisioned them lining the walkway up to our house, I realized that flames would easily be blown out, and dreading continually relighting them throughout the night, came up with this solution using hacked LED candle lights.

Step 1 Materials and Equipment

Materials

LED tea light "candle"
3/4" PVC pipe (which has a diameter of a bit more than 1 in)
Wire
Binder clips
Silicone or latex caulk
White spray paint
Monofilament fishing line (darker color is less visible)

Equipment

Hacksaw (to cut PVC pipe)
Soldering iron
Hot glue gun
Caulking gun

Note on LED candle lights:  There are many different models of LED candle tea lights, and they can be obtained for very little cost (<$1 ea) from dollar stores, craft stores, even Costco.  These lights are meant to replace candle tea lights and have a special LED which contains the flicker circuitry.  (Note:  Apparently, there is a second type of LED tea light which contains the flicker circuitry on a circuit board and not internal to the LED itself.  You can probably figure out how to modify these instructions to utilize this type of tea light, but as I've never seen one of these, I'll tailor this Instructable to using the LED with the imbedded flicker circuit.)

Comments

[manish15]

Oh if it would have been a real candle then this might have enhanced the effect :http://scimad.com/invisible-fire-extinguisher/

[PeckLauros]

Thanks! I will do it now!

[rredmon]

Very creative...might I suggest in lieu of caulk to simulate wax, use hot glue. it sets a lot faster...of course you'd have to paint it...but you may have more control...they look great though.

[makermike]

Yup, thought of using hot glue, and it DEFINITELY would have set faster! For the scale of these candles, I thought that the thicker caulk bead would look better. For smaller candles, hot glue would be perfect though.

[l8nite]

thats a GREAT idea !! nice ible as well