November 14, 2024


How to make these easy and fun floating witch hats for your front porch or
inside!

I’ve wanted to make these cute DIY “floating” luminary witch hats for our
porch for years! They turned out to be a really easy way to add some cute
Halloween decorations to our front porch, but you could hang them anywhere for
easy decor.

I tried a couple methods of creating these hanging hats with two lighting
options, and I’ll share both here. Both are very simple, but one is so simple
it only take a couple minutes to create each witch hat luminary. 

I started with these inexpensive black witch hats: 

black witch hats

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My first tutorial uses
LED votives that operate on a timer
— once you turn them on, they’ll run for a certain amount of time. So turn
them on in the evening and they’ll operate every evening after.
I used
fishing line
for this project because you want the hats to look as though they’re floating
around on your porch. 🙂 If you don’t have that on hand, dental floss works as
well. (These don’t weigh much!) 

How to make your witch hats glow

I tied the line around the “flame” of the votives: 

You could also use smaller tea lights that are battery-operated as well.

Because I didn’t want the votive to hang in the top of the witch hat, I knew
I’d need to prevent the fish line from pulling all the way up. 

You’ll want your candle to hang down inside the hat, not sit up at the very
tip. 

To allow for this, I grabbed some
metal spacers
and washers I had in my tool stash. I determined the space I wanted between
the top of the hat and where I wanted the candle to hang. 

Then I wrapped the fishing line around the spacers: 

LED votives for witch hats

This allows the washer to pull up into the tip of the hat instead of the
candle!

Anything small that has a little weight to it will work! The only purpose is
to prevent the candle from pulling all the way up in the witch hat. 

Next up, the even simpler version!

The votives would be perfect for inside, but for our porch I wanted something
that was a bit brighter. I thought about what I had on hand and realized our
Christmas window candles would be perfect!

Christmas window candles

Our particular candles aren’t available anymore, but
these floating candles I shared last week are very similar. They come with a remote and work
on a timer like ours do.

You use the remote to set amount of hours you want them to stay on. They will
turn on at the same time every day after that, so you can hang these up high
and forget about them! 

I was able to tie the fishing line around where the cap at the bottom screws
on — so easy: 

fishing line around fake candles

Because the candles were hanging upside down, the lit “flame” part was in the
middle of the hat already: 

glowing witch hat DIY

So no need to add a washer! If the line pulled the candle up to the top of the
hat, that was fine.

How to hang floating witch hats

With either method, you’ll want to take a sewing needle and feed your fishing
wire through so you can poke the needle through the top of the witch
hat: 

How to hang floating witch hats

It goes through the material easily! 

Then figure out the height you want the hat to hang and tie a loop at the end
of your fishing wire so you can hang your hats. Make sure to knot it a few
times so the line doesn’t slip. 

You can hang them in varying heights from your front porch ceiling, around
your front door, or like I did, along the back of the porch beam: 

floating witch hats on front porch

how to hang witch hats
I hung mine from nails I have up for Christmas lights, but you can use
small cup hooks
to secure them to the ceiling as well. 
Using the Christmas candles was the perfect solution! They have the perfect
amount of light and operate on a timer or with a remote control. 

glowing Halloween witch hats

And when I take these down the candles can transition to the front windows for
the holiday season. 🙂 

I love how the candles sway around inside the hats…it’s the exact look I was
going for! 

DIY glowing witch hats on porch

These are so fun!! Since I had most of what I needed already, I only spent
money on the hats, which I will reuse every year. 

The candles take two AA batteries and last for weeks.

Here are some other options for making this easy witch hat decor: 

  • If you don’t have the votives or candles, you can use glow sticks! They
    won’t glow forever, but
    these sticks
    last 12 hours and are super bright. Perfect for trick or treaters on
    Halloween night! 
  • You can find most (if not all) of the items you’ll need for this project
    at the dollar store.
  • If you don’t have fishing line, thin thread will work as well. From far
    away you’ll hardly notice it. 
  • These floating hats are so lightweight, you could probably use Command
    hooks to hang them from the ceiling. 
  • These would be so fun inside too — a bunch hanging around the fireplace
    mantel or down a hallway would look GREAT!

I love that our landscape lighting casts witch hat shadows all over our front
porch: 

floating Halloween witch hats on front porch

What are some of your favorite Halloween porch decor ideas? 

Check out a few of my favorite DIY Halloween decor projects from over the
years below: 

Save this Halloween project for later by pinning this image:

DIY glowing witch hats on porch



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