Valentine, You're Griffindorable!!

With Valentine's day fast approaching, we are hard at work making our valentines.  As we are pretty big Harry Potter fans here and with the anticipated new Harry Potter movie coming out in November (you can see a trailer for it HERE), Rini decided her valentines this year would be wands.

We printed the valentines on thick card stock and cut them out. Then punched a whole through each one and used string to tie them to the wands. You can get a set of your own awesome Harry Potter valentines at Art by STOWE.

To make your own Harry Potter wands you will need:

• Printer paper
• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue sticks
• Acrylic or craft paints (we used black and brown but you can add other colors too)
• Marbles or gems (to add to the base- this is optional)
• Wooden dowels (this is optional but add support to the wands and makes them more sustainable)

Begin by taking a dowel (if using them) and placing it diagonally across one corner or a piece of printer paper. Grab the corner and place it on the dowel. You can tape it here with scotch tape if you want. Now roll the paper and dowel (as tightly as you can) until you get to the end of the paper. Once there, secure paper corner to the paper wand with a bit of hot glue.

If you aren't using a dowel, you will do the same process, just without the dowel. Start at a corner of your printer paper and roll (as tightly as possible) diagonally across the paper. Once at the end, secure with hot glue.

For both wands, you will need to fill the inside of the wand with hot glue.  If using the dowel, its easier as you have less of an area to fill. Fill both ends (and middle if not using the dowel) of your wand with the hot glue. Be patient as this part can take a while. 

If you wanted to add a gem or marble ot one end, now is the time to do that.

Once your wands are filled and dried, you can use the hot glue to make designs on them. Rini wanted them to look like wood, so we made a wood fiber like pattern on all the wands. You could though build up areas and make larger 3D decorations on wands.

We found that its best to do one side of a wand before doing the other as the glue is hot and doesn't always dry as fast as we would like. 

Next comes the painting part. Take your acrylics and paint the colors and designs you want on your wands. Since we wanted ours to look like wood, Rini first painted them brown. Once the paint had dried, we made a black wash to paint over the brown. The black wash will pool up in the crevices and create a sort of rugged and aged look, making the paper to look more like actual wood.  To make a wash, simply add a little bit of paint to a cup and mix with water. Start with a little water and add more until you get the desired liquid base. For us, we used a 1:2 ratio. 

Once they were dried from the wash, we added our cards and viola,  Harry Potter wands for all.

Happy valentine's Day everyone!