Check out the latest tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System from Erin St Blaine: the Burning Fire Wizard Staff.

Make a motion-reactive Wizard Cosplay Staff from a plastic water bottle, a polycarbonate tube, and expanding foam. This staff looks wicked cool, and has three different motion-activated animations with sound effects. The tutorial shows you how to customize the sounds and light colors, so it plays to your own Wizard, Skeletor, Gandalf, or Xena cosplay (or whatever else you can dream up!)

From the guide:

Complete your Wizard or Druid cosplay with a glowing, ever-burning fire staff. This prop is lightweight and sturdy, and made from inexpensive materials. You don’t need much in the way of sculpting ability to create something organic and magical, that looks as though it was cut from the Yggdrasil with an enchanted axe and then imbued with fires from the Mines of Moria before serving the White Witch Jadis for a century or two and then falling into your hands at the end of a rollicking adventure.

You’ll need some soldering ability, a little creativity, and a willingness to get a bit messy. You can upload our CircuitPython code as-is, or it’s easy to change the colors and sound effects to complement your own Wizard or Barbarian character. This would also make a wonderful staff for a monster or Fairy Queen with a few stylistic variations.

See the full build tutorial on the Adafruit Learning System!