My ambient lighting candle project

Ok, I am notorious for trolling thrift stores and junk shops for things I can use to add to my haunt. The wife and our family all look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them that I am going Halloween shopping in the middle of July. Anyway, I picked up a bag of the electric candles like people put in their windows at Christmas, and got to thinking that there must be some way I could use them, either in the graveyard, or possibly in the haunt itself. Here's a tutorial on how I figured out what I will do with them. For reference, My character is an evil priest who is trying to capture souls to make himself immortal. I figured I can ring my altar with these.

I started off with more than 2 dozen white candles. These came in the single and triple variety. I lightly sanded them with 400 grit sandpaper, just to make sure that spray paint would stick to them. I sprayed them all with some cheapo wal-mart brand gloss black spray paint. Then I let them dry.

For detail, I bought a bottle of bright red acrylic paint, and a fine brush. I proceeded to paint each "wax drip" on the plastic candles with red, to make it look like blood. After it dried, I sprayed a matte clear coat over the whole thing. After it dried, I took out the old bulb and replaced it with a flicker bulb.


When I start putting the haunt together, I will try to get a few photos of these installed in my altar, as well as a tutorial on how I built my altar and a couple of other things.


Hope this helped someone who was looking for an idea on an accent piece, or that last little detail.