Realistic Miniature LED Candles

In this instructable I’ll share my techniques and tips on making miniature candles. Great way to bring your dioramas to life, decorate dollhouses, window sills or shelves. Or just cool surprise your friends or family with cool crafted Christmas gift.

This instructable will be in two parts, first the simple version, then a little bit more advanced one.

Supplies

* LED's

Warm white ones look the best in my opinion, you can use yellow ones as well.

1.8mm LED is quite small yet big enough for easy handling

I'll use 0805 SMD LED's for more advanced candles.

* Hot-glue gun (with some standard white opaque hot-glue of course:))

* Batteries or DC power source

* Current limiting resistors (depending from your choice of LED's and power source)

Step 1: First Glue Layer

Start applying hot-glue to the LED as shown on the picture. Try to imagine the shape and size of your candle.

Leave the LED hat out from the glue as the flame part will be attached onto it later.

Add just small amount of glue along the length of tour candle, we'll make it thicker as we go along. Otherwise the glue will start dripping or flowing.

Tip: When the glue is still soft but not sticky you can roll the candle between your fingers to straighten it up and make it more cylindrical.

Step 2: More Layers

When the glue is set you can add another layer. Just keep adding layers until you are happy with your candle. Make it long and thin or short and thick.

Feel free to add realism with adding wax dripping effects or raising the rim to make some candle tunneling effects.

You can use hot tip/side of your glue gun to smooth it or fix some mistakes. You can even cut out entire side off with exacto knife and start over.

Step 3: The Flame

Next step is basically just adding a blob of hot-glue to act as a flame.

* Place a drop of Hot-glue on to of the LED

* Start pulling it away until droplet/flame shape is formed

* By gently blowing on the glue turn it upside down and let it set a little. Blowing solidifies the glue faster and holding it upside down helps it to maintain its shape.

* You can stretch the flame a little while the glue is still malleable

* Finally cut of the excess (with exacto knife of snips).

Tip: No worries if you mess it up, just trim the glue and try again!

Step 4: Finishing Touches

Simple version of our diorama candle is now ready.

You can paint them as well, I use water soluble acrylic paint.

You can make them flicker, but it takes more effort. I’ve used simple arduino pro mini or Attiny85 for this purpose.

You can use flickering LED's as well, bu they all have yellow colors that i don’t like.

Just remember to use some kind of current limiting when using LED's in your project, easiest option is to use current limiting resistors.

Step 5: Next Level - Even More Realistic

let's make our candles even more realistic.

I'll be using smaller sized SMD LED's in 0805 format. They are tiny but still easy to solder wires to them. Again, warm whites are my preferred choice of color.

Step 6: Soldering

These are more finicky and more difficult to solder, but still doable.

These wires will act as our fake burnt wick and in my case i used solid core wire for anode, to add rigidity to it.

Thinner stranded wire is just wrapped/twisted around the supporting solid core wire.

This way we can create illusion of a single wick, you cannot do this with two thick wires.

Step 7: The Wick

Its better to have as light colored wire as possible for the wick. The dark wire inside the candle will be still visible and will ruin our illusion.

Just paint the tip of the wick black, in real life this will add tons of realism. I used regular sharpie for that.

Step 8: The Candle

Now just repeat steps 1..4 from this instructable.

Step 9: Finito

Now you know how to easily create nice and realistic looking candles. Cool addition to dioramas or decorations.

Comments

[Cohesive Contrivances]

Nice! Does the hot glue around the LED ever soften from the heat, or is the LED too cool for that?

[inspiredStudio]

LEDs are too cool for that. I have some of those LED candles that have been working for many years, still, look like on day one.

[boocat]

So they won't get warm enough to off-gas or smell like burned glue or plastic? (My sister has a parakeet and they are sensitive to fumes.)

[inspiredStudio]

When you underrun LEDs so that they barely work, they will look much more realistic. And they will not even warm up. If you run them with the full current they will get hot and wat too bright, no point in doing that in miniatures or dioramas.

[boocat]

Are the "SMD LED's in 0805 format" what I have heard called "pico" sized LEDs?
This is perfect for a dollhouse diorama I have been working on. Realistic atmosphere for "Barbie's Haunted Nightmare House" 🎃

[inspiredStudio]

Never heard of 'pico' naming, but they are very small indeed. I have some that are even smaller, but hard to solder. You can buy some SMD LEDs presoldered to wires, they are used in diorama and miniature builds.

[jessyratfink]

This is wonderful! I love the hot glue on the LED to diffuse it and make it look like a flame. Genius :D

[inspiredStudio]

Hot-glue is really versatile, i used to tell myself, i do not need it. Now i have 4 glue guns and use it almost daily.

[boocat]

I am getting some, too!

[rmartori]

Would there be a way to turn on specific lights with a button if you arranged them all like the candelabra example?

[inspiredStudio]

There are a lot of methods to make lights turn on/off. What exactly do you want to make?

[rmartori]

A teeny menorah

[inspiredStudio]

How do you want to power it? There are a lot of tiny switches on the market, for example, latching flashlight switches.

[Vasya_FD]

It looks very cool and realistic, especially those at the beginning of the article!

[inspiredStudio]

They do look eerily realistic in real life, even the simpler ones. Especially if they are in diorama or any other setting and you look at it from a little distance.

[PhyllisD23]

What are a tour candle and an LED hat? Is your LED attached to flexible wires or is it on two stiff ones? Couldn't tell from your photos and what do your resistors look like?

[inspiredStudio]

I did not get you first question. But in surface mount LED case i use one solid core wire to act as support for wick and flame, and other wireis thinner flexible one. I use resistors depending from the application and power supply, you have to calculate it each time. Voltage varies from project to project, 3.3V, 5V, 12V etc.. Resistor placement varies as well, sometimes I’ll add them to wires, sometimes it's hidden in miniature itself and sometimes i have resistor on controller board.

[attosa]

clever:)

[jegatheesan.soundarapandian]

Amazing look so cute........

[inspiredStudio]

Tnx!