Colored Fire or Colored Flames Pinecones

It's easy to add colored flames to your fireplace or campfire by treating pinecones with common chemicals. This video shows two ways to make colored fire pinecones. Burn them alone or add them to a fire.

You can use one or more of the following chemicals; borax, boric acid or copper sulfate. I used roach killer for the boric acid, 20 Mule Team Borax for the borax and Zep Root Killer for the copper sulfate. All of these chemicals produce a green flame, so if you mix them together you won't get any weird results. Don't add just any old chemicals to the pinecone because you could cancel out the colors you want or you could cause a chemical reaction that would produce an undesirable effect.

Sprinkle the chemicals on the pinecone or pre-treat pinecones that you want to use later on. Because these salts don't burn you won't get toxic smoke. The boron compounds and copper sulfate are fairly eco-friendly, but they are toxic to insects and algae and invertebrates in ponds, so watch where you put your ashes.