Inspiration comes at the strangest moments. We had been looking for something sturdy to use as a base for the cauldron for a little while. One day in spring while we were at Menards buying plants for Mothers day, we noticed a large hanging planter basket. Both David and I (John) agreed almost immediately that this was exactly what we needed. We bought it and brought it home and found that it was the exact size of the base of the cauldron.
Most videos we have seen online show people building their fire bases out of expanding foam, and it works really well. Why re-invent that part of the wheel. We do NOT like the idea of directly embedding the lights in the foam however. What happens if you need to change a bulb, or something goes wrong electrically and you need to get to the lights or wiring and its fully encased in foam? You have to destroy the prop. No thank you.
In our case we were already planning on using “WS2812” seed pixels for our lighting. We knew from experience that these strings fit nicely inside frosted tubing used for plumbing. So, we lined the inside of the basket frame with the tubing. We also cut openings at each loop of the tubing to make it easier to pull the lights/wires, this ended up being very important as pulling those lights through the tubing without the access points would have been impossible due to friction, and physics in general.
After the tubing was secured we coated the inside of the basket with blue painters tape. making certain the tubing holes and ends were protected as well. We then applied a liberal coating of Locktite Expanding foam to simulate a large pile of ash from the fire. Critics may say that “that’s too big a pile and looks weird.” My response is, you have to keep in mind your “audience’s” viewing perspective. Certainly up close it could possibly look a little odd, however our display is geared towards viewing form the street, so from a 20 foot viewing distance it looks fine. (Honestly, after it was done we discovered it looks perfectly fine form up close as well)
Once the spray foam had fully cured over night we inserted the lights and tested. After a few tweaks to the lighting controller, the fire look very convincing and we were satisfied with the over all initial results. The next step was to paint the foam and add in our fake rocks at the base.
The fire foam was painted using an initial thin coat of black spray paint, with a few random spots more heavy to add a little more dept to the look during the day. This was then followed up with a light coat of gray. I kept the paint light as I did not want to block the LED lighting from being able to generate the fire effect.
After the paint dried I attached the fake rocks using a combination of spray foam, and wooden BBQ skewers for support. Once that spray foam finished curing there were a few areas to touch up by hand with a little more paint.
Mother nature also decided she wanted to help out, and the night the foam was curing, a wind storm dropped a decent sized branch from the tree in the front yard. I chopped up the branch and applied the sticks to the foam ash pile using a combination of hot glue, and thin gauge craft wire poked through the foam and attached to the planter basket.
When all was said and done, with the combination of the flickering LED lighting, and the fog the fire looks quite convincing and has received a number of compliments.
