Do you want your campfire to be an explosion of colors rather than just those boring yellow and orange flames?

This spring and summer, a product called “Funky Colored Flames” will be available at major retailers including WalMart. What are they? They are a product you sprinkle on your campfire that, five minutes after being applied, creates a brilliant display of blue, green, and purple flames that last up to 30 minutes.

And you don’t have to wait until you have a campfire to use them. They can also be used in outdoor fire pits, on bonfires, and even indoors in wood burning fireplaces.

Although I wasn’t able to find a website for the “funky flames,” from Winlow Outdoor Experiences , their phone number is 416.792.0385. You might want to contact them for a local retailers if you are unable to find them in your area.

Or, if you want to do what my family does to create multi-colored blue, green, and purple flames when we go camping; purchase a piece of copper tubing (available in the plumbing supply section of your local hardware store either - usually in lengths several feet long) in a width that will fit inside a garden/outdoor water hose. If you don’t have a rubber garden hose laying around home that has seen better days and can be cut up, check garage sales or ask friends and family if that have an old leaky one you can borrow. You can purchase one if you prefer, but you’ll be cutting it up in chunks and burning it, so there’s no need to purchase an expensive one. You want the copper tubing to fit in the garden hose snugly though. Also, since you’ll be cutting up the copper tubing, you may want to check with your local plumber to see if he or she has scrap pieces you can buy.

Cut the hose and copper tubing into 3-4 inch pieces. Push the copper tubing inside the hose. Take several pieces with you on your camping trip. When the campfire is hot, place one to two of the copper tubing/rubber hose pieces into the fire. The heat will cause a reaction to take place between the copper and the rubber resulting in blue, purple, and green flames that will last for about as long as the “funky colored flames,” around 30 minutes. This technique can only be used outside though, not indoors.

Also, I am not an expert on what burning copper tubing and rubber hose does to the environment. Don’t do it if it’s not allowed at the campground you are staying at. So far I have not found any campgrounds that don’t allow this. In fact, there are a few in my area that sell the pieces of copper tubing and hose already assembled and ready to throw into a campfire.

We have also used old Christmas tree light strands to get the same effect as the copper tubing and hose pieces, but you need to make sure to remove all the glass bulbs, along with their plastic holders, from the light sets first which is kind of tedious and time-consuming. When I do it, I use a wire cutters and snip the wires off between each bulb, ending up with lots of short wire strands that I toss into a small plastic storage bin. At the campground, I toss a couple handfuls of the wire into the campfire, sit back, and wait for the lightshow to begin. Again, this can only be done outdoors and I don’t know if this has any harmful effects on the environment (or any more than burning wood does).