DIY Floating and Glowing Witch Hats for the Front Porch

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:

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This witch hat set came with 12 hats and a bunch of cute plastic bat cutouts as well. (This set has six hats if you don't need as many.)

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:

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!

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:

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

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:

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:

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.

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!

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: