Playing Snape and Olivander

One of the tasks I have this August is to prepare for Henry's big Birthday party. I don't throw big birthday parties with lots of friends and such for my kids usually. So far each of my kids has had very small parties with family and sometimes with friends. Sophie had a big friend party for her sixth birthday with tons of kids, a theme, party games,  presents and everything. Ian too had his big Indiana Jones party when he turned 6 as well. Henry turns 6 this year and is planning quite a celebration. He has chosen to have a Harry Potter theme and has quite a large imagination as far as what we are going to do during this party. I have been racking my brain and searching the internet for things we can do for this party.

 So far we have tried out some potion making things so we can have a little potions class. I bought one of these Magic Science kits and gave the projects a try. The boys had a great time doing each of the experiments. Luckily there was included enough of most of the ingredients so I can do the projects again. So we will certainly have a good time throwing things together to watch them react.

 I searched for wands online and couldn't find any inexpensive enough for me to be able to get one for each of our guests. I did, however, find a tutorial for making wands out of paper.  I decided to give it a try. At first I started to make only 4 of them but after rolling up the first few I decided I might as well just make 15. That should be enough for all the guests at the party plus a few.

 First you just roll up the paper. This is just normal 8.5'' x 11'' paper rolled so that one end is slightly smaller than the other. I used lots of Elmer's glue to make sure the paper was well coated and the edges stuck down well. I let these dry for a few hours but ended up putting the whole tray in the warm oven for a about 20 min. They came out nice and dry and pretty stiff.

 I then took my little glue gun and filled in the two ends of each of the rolls and then embellished them with rings, twists or just globs of glue to add some texture and a bit more strength to the wands.

 One nice sunny and breezy afternoon I took the wands outside and spray painted them a nice brown color. I left them outside for a few hours to let the paint smell dissipate.  Now I know why Michael's keep their spray paint under lock and key. That stuff stinks! I am glad I did all these at the same time. I don't want to have to spray paint again any time soon.

At this point the wands were all the same color and looked sort of like chocolate.  But I broke out my box of acrylic paints and went to work distressing them with a variety of colors. My kids kept wanting me to paint them bright colors. They hadn't caught the vision of these actually looking like wood.
 

I did add some purple, red and greens into the mix along with the browns and blacks. The brown ones turned out better in my mind but the kids liked them all.  Each wand turned out very different from the others in shape decoration and color. 

 I don't know if I am quite done yet with these wands. There are some that turned out really well and others I am still not happy with so I may go back and touch them up a little more or add some gold paint to give them a little pizzazz.  But hey I think they look really great. It is amazing what you can make with paper and glue.

 Sophie really wanted a vine covered wand like Hermione's wand and this is what my version turned out like. It is a little more green colored but Sophie was happy with it.

 This little guy is happy with the results. I sure hope all the kids will enjoy their wands at the party. But since the only thing I didn't already have  on hand and that  had to spend money on was the bottle of spray paint (which I bought with a 50% off coupon) I am thrilled with the results.

I have a frog mold so I can make chocolate frogs. I think I will have to give them a trail run soon so I can make sure I know what I am doing.  That will be a yummy experiment. Has anyone ever made a caramel filling for this type of thing. I can't do peanut butter because some of the kids that will be invited have nut allergies? I am sure I can find something online.

Seriously what did people do before the internet and blogs where people shared their tips and tricks?