Colorful Christmas Flames Add A Festive Touch To The Holidays

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The best way to add multiple colors to your holiday fires is by soaking wood chips, kindling, corncobs, and other types of "fire starting" materials in a one-to-three solution of any of your chemicals. That is: Mix one cup of a coloring substance with three cups of water and stir the solution thoroughly until the powder has completely dissolved. Then again, there's nothing magic about this one-to-three formula. You can thin it, if you like, to as little as one cup of powder to a gallon of water and the only difference you'll note is that the hues of the flames will be somewhat less intense when you burn your treated materials.

Do your mixing and soaking in a plastic garbage can. Larger chunks of wood can be stood on end and wedged in tightly enough to hold themselves almost entire ly under the coloring solution. Corncobs, kindling, wood chips, and other small burnables are easier to handle when dumped into a porous bag and held down with a rock or brick.

This is a good project for "found" materials, too. Old packing crates, discards from the lumberyard, leftovers from construction sites, and other scavenged burnables are all likely candidates. I especially enjoy rolling old newspapers into tight rolls, tying each bundle with a stout cord, and then soaking these homemade "logs" in one solution or another. And pinecones—which look good in the fireplace even before they're burned-are especial ly fun.

Soak chunks of wood for about 24 hours, rolled newspapers until they're completely saturated, and pinecones and other smaller items for five to 10 minutes. Then remove them from the coloring agent, lot them drain over the garbage can, and place them on sheets of wax paper or several layers of newspaper to dry (these "drying" papers, of course, can later be rolled up and burned, too).

ENJOY, ENJOY

And that's all there is to it ... except for the fun you'll have at your next Thanksgiving or Christmas get-together or just on those long, cold winter evenings when the family is clustered around the fire. Expect some "oohing" and "aahing" every time you throw a fresh newspaper log, some wood chips, or a few pinecones on the blaze ... and a different colored set of flames goes up the chimney!

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