Hogwarts Decorating: Ollivanders

The best part about transforming our home into the Harry Potter world, was being able to work on things together. And the most fun we had (and time we spent) was making wands.


Jk happened upon this online wand tutorial the day before we visited Universal Studios--and he saved us about $100 knowing we were going to make our own wands at home rather than buying the ones in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

4 months later, in the magical month of October, we set to work one Sunday making wands. Between half-heartedly watching football, fielding fantasy football texts from my mom, and becoming increasingly enthralled with RG3, we made about 7 wands.

First, we went outside to collect some suitable sticks. (We had a pile about 6 feet high of them from clearing out our yard and we much preferred using those to buying chopsticks or *gasp* using the ones we got as a wedding gift for a craft project rather than eating sushi). Then, we heated up the hot glue gun, and went to it!

I'll admit, I was skeptical. We abandoned trying to shape the hot glue with our hands or use beads in the molding process as it... well it didn't work at ALL. By the time the glue dried I looked at my stick--belayden with a bumpy opeque mess of glue at the bottom, and began to wonder whether we should have just bought out wands at Ollivanders... But then we painted them! On each wand, we put a coat of some acryllic we mixed, and then went over lightly with a second color to highlight the portions of the wand that stuck up. It was amazing how AWESOME they looked! The paint really brought out all the wonderful characteristics of the stick (it's bark and bumps) in a way that wouldn't have worked with a chopstick. And, the paint covered all the imperfections in the hot glue and made it look streamlined and incredibly charming.

And we were SO thrilled with the results, that we desperately wanted to immediately take the 30 min drive to Zionsville to show them off to our family. (We ended up containing our excitement and waiting until the next night).

Since then, we've had about 2-3 more wand-making sessions. Jk's a wiz at sculpting the glue on the wands and comes up with all sorts of awesome ideas like molding 3 thin twigs into 1 wand or adding special grips to the handle or bumps along the tip. And I do the paint jobs. So as he molds, he passes it down to me where I finish it off and set it out to dry. We have a blast creating all different styles and shapes, and it's neat to create something together. :)

For the sleepover (and our own enjoyment), we set up our own Ollivanders Wand shop (on the piano.. of course). We also had a vase on it with all the extra sticks we gathered. When the girls came over, they picked a stick, and we all made wands. :)

The skinny gray one is my favorite:

If you're wanting a wand, it's really easy to make, and the results are beyond sweet. Seriously, try it out!  And if you don't have time, send us a message because JK is dying to be commissioned to make more. :)