Introduction: Floating Spirit Lights

We live a little off the beaten path, so getting trick-or-treaters to walk the extra cake to our identify takes a fiddling work.  Rather than resorting to Hollywood premiere style search lights, this year we floated upwardly some spooky Spirit Lights to attempt an entice people to make the trek, and it worked extremely well.

This is a very quick and easy project, with huge effect.  Our "spirits" were attracting people from entirely unlike neighborhoods!

One caution:  If you lot alive near ability lines, or it is an excessively breezy night, you should Not attempt this project.

Pace 1: Tools & Materials

Required Tools

  • Pair of scissors

Materials

  • Very big, Blackness, helium airship(s)
  • Miniature glow sticks
  • 12" size, white balloons
  • Cheesecloth
  • Spool of fishing line

Not all party stores behave balloons large enough for this, and so you may need to ask around.  The ones I used were 3' in diameter, and a niggling pricey ($fourteen filled), merely well worth it.  I've attempted this before with standard size balloons and it did non piece of work well.  It took three standard balloons but to hold one ghost aloft, and fifty-fifty so information technology was a little sketchy.  The monster balloons price a little more, but they can keep upwards 2 - iv ghosts each, depending on how many glow sticks you employ.

Footstep 2: Creating Spirits

Assembly of the "spirit" balloons is very unproblematic, and is a keen way to go kids involved, then grab yourself a helper, and allow'due south get started!

Note:  Don't start also early, or the glow sticks will first losing their ability before it even gets nighttime out.  I started cracking and shaking mine just after sunset.  If yous have everything else prepped beforehand, final assembly goes real quick.

For each Spirit, you lot volition need:

  • i glow stick
  • one white airship
  • 1 3' ten 1.5' slice of cheesecloth (approximate size)
  • v feet of fishing line

I actually used two glow sticks in each of my balloons, but decided later that wasn't entirely necessary.  Using more glow sticks allows you to blow the balloons up a little larger, but they also add quite a flake of boosted weight.  Also, the larger you lot blow the white balloons, the less glow you get overall.  Information technology'south a bit of a balancing act, and certainly adjustable for the expect you're ultimately going for.  In the cease, I decided that using one glow stick, and just slightly inflating the balloons looked the best.

For each spirit, take your helper crevice a glow stick and shake it up well.

While that is happening, blow upwardly a balloon a trivial chip, then permit the air out.  This merely helps to make sure the inside of the airship isn't sticking to itself, and makes it a little easier to insert the glow stick.

Once yous take a well-shaken glow stick, have your helper place information technology inside the balloon.

Now, inflate the balloon and necktie it off.  If y'all're not sure how much to inflate the balloon, take information technology into a night bath and guess the amount of glow you're getting, so let out, or add more than air, equally necessary.

Step iii: Giving Them Apparel

For extra outcome, if yous don't have rain in the forecast, use the cheesecloth to really give them a wispy, spirit look.  If it is raining, yous will need to skip this stride because once the cloth soaks with rain, even the behemothic helium balloons will not exist able to proceed them up anymore.

With the balloon knot pointing upwardly, mantle a piece of cheesecloth over the airship, and take your helper concur it.

Cutting off a length of angling line, at least 5' long, and necktie one terminate effectually the balloon knot, thus securing the cheesecloth in place, and creating an invisible tether for your spirit.

Step 4: Launch!

In one case you have prepped all of the spirit balloons you program to utilize, it is time to head outside and launch everything.  The behemothic balloons will probably come up with weights on them, and I'd recommend keeping them in place until you're fix to send each 1 up.

Pick a place close to your house, and preferably away from whatever paths where people might be walking; if the wind picks upward a flake, and the balloons start globe-trotting, yous don't want the lines falling across where people tin get tangled in them.

Pull a lilliputian pb off the reel of angling line (don't cut information technology yet!) and tie information technology to i of the blackness balloons.  Once information technology is secured, cutting off the weights and start letting out angling line so the balloon rises about xv anxiety in the air.  If your offset spirit is likewise close to it, when people look up, they are more apt to meet the blackness balloon and spoil the mystery.  If information technology is really too close, it could fifty-fifty illuminate the blackness balloon a bit, then give yourself a good deal of room.

Once it has floated up a bit, tie a loop in the line.  I'one thousand non too versed in knots, but hopefully the pictures prove what I'm talking near.  Since it's actually hard to meet the angling line, I took pictures of the aforementioned process using regular cord.

With the loop in place, necktie the lead from the spirit balloon to the loop, and then start letting out more line to send that one up in the air.  Afterward that airship is 5 or 10 anxiety above you, repeat the process with the side by side 1.  If you lot are using one glow stick per balloon, you can place at least iii.  If you're using 2 glow sticks per airship, you'll only be able to attach 2 of them.  In one case y'all've got your terminal one attached and floated up, necktie the line off on something secured to the ground.

Keep your helper handy for this process, it's a footling tough to juggle all the stuff on your own.

Step v: Stand Back and Admire Your Work

That's all there is to information technology.  Repeat step #four for each large balloon yous accept and stand up back to admire your work.

On a cloudless night, the black balloons volition almost completely disappear in the black sky.  Even with some cloud embrace, they aren't all that noticeable (but you can meet i of them in my pictures).  If there is a little breeze, the large balloons will drift around some, and the long leads on the spirit balloons will let them to migrate around independently, giving the whole display a really cool random wait!

The pictures and video don't quite practice it justice, but it is amazing in person.

Other ideas:

  • Make some extras and hang them near your front end door.  We create a graveyard by our porch, and I tied some from trees over in that location.
  • Cord fishing line between ii loftier trees and hang them downwardly from there, for more of a horizontal spread wait.
  • I used the traditional green glow sticks, but other colors could be interesting as well.
  • Try full-size glow sticks, with slightly larger balloons.

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