Harry Potter Party Part 1 - Diagon Alley

My daughter - who is me through and through and more me than I would hope for (sassy and strong-willed) is currently obsessed with Harry Potter (not the books yet) She wanted all things to do with the movies - so I pinterest hunted and blog searched and finally came up with a happy solution to what I would create for her. So I printed on 11 x 17 paper the Mauraders map found on this lovely site - antiqued the paper using the well heard of and often repeated coffee method.

After following the fold instructions I trimmed all the excess off - which I had because I had enlarged it. But I liked it bigger - look at the difference. Such a wonderful map! The details are fabulous.

Sent off the invitations and began on my projects. To start with they were going to get their cauldrons, wands and owls at Diagon Alley. I made the wands super cheap and easy. with stuff I always have around my house. I started with my supplies: Glue, Dowels, and Amazon shipping paper. I always save this brown paper from my packages - it was the perfect color. (no painting needed)

Take the paper and rip it down to a more manageable size - tapering the corners so the wand will come to more of a point. Take your white elmer's glue and cover most of the paper. Put in the dowel - fold in half - add more glue and roll it up. It gets messy and the glue over flows but that is what I love! Place in a glass and let dry - once dry and took little rips bits of the brown paper and after trimming the awkward parts - I covered the ends and blended it together. If you want to add painted highlights you can, but the more popular wands were the plain paper. I did black highlights and brown highlights.

The cauldrons were just brown craft bags with a cauldron colored on the side. That way they could carry all the goodies they were getting.

Finally the owl was just a pattern template that I found here - I cut out all the pieces and preassembled the body - after which they got to glue on the rest. I re-glued with hot glue while they were in potions class so that no littles would have burned fingers.

I love how they turned out!

After Diagon Alley - my houseful of 8 year olds ran off to the basement to have potions class with 'Professer Snape'

I will go into that in my next post.