DIY Harry Potter Wand Spell Tokens

For a present I made my wife some Harry Potter Spell Tokens, which are just little wooden disks with spells from the Harry Potter books on one side and the wand motions (according to the internet) on the other side. 

I used round disks from a hobby shop and a wood burning kit to carve the spell name and wand motions.  This left a nice dark outline that I foolishly thought would last through the staining process. It did not.

I stained the discs with a Cherry and an Oak stain/varnish combo and..wasn't super excited with the results.  The Cherry discs were still OK, but the Oak stain was much too dark and you could no longer appreciate the words or spells. 

I decided to adjust the overly dark Oak tokens by painting the indented text and spells gold.  I used an acrylic gold paint and lightly painted as close to in the indents as I could.  I then wiped off the token, and all the paint not in the grooves was wiped away (though it did leave a metallic gold sheen on the tokens). 

For the Cherry tokens, the text was much easier to read after staining, but still not perfect.  I used a black acrylic paint to darken the letters and spells for the Cherry tokens, and it turned out nicely.  It looks as though the original wood burning is what you see, but it's actually black paint coating the carved letters. 

That's it!  I put them all in a little black satchel so they are easy to carry around (in case you need to throw one at your enemies, I guess).  If you chose to do this project I'd recommend using lighter stains, or really carve the letters deep so you can paint them well afterward. 

DIY Animal Terrarium Holiday Ornaments

Check out these adorable animal terrarium ornaments! 

A fun family DIY craft for the holidays

See the full instructions from Dr. Chuck here!

DIY Wizard Wands

For Halloween this year we are going as wizards from the Harry Potter universe, so of course we needed to create some wands! There are many descriptions online of using hot glue, dowels, and acrylic paint to make your own wands, and that's exactly what we did too.  I was surprised at how well it worked, and how nicely the glue took paint.  The glue works particularly well for organic shapes and patterns.



Supplies:
12 inch wooden dowels (from a craft store)
Sandpaper
Hot glue gun and many extra sticks of glue
Cheap acrylic kids paint
Glossy polyurethane

Steps:

The first step for me was sanding down one side of the dowel which would be the 'tip' of the wand.

Next I added the hot glue.  I first made a sort of 'handle' for each wand where the thumb and forefinger will rest.  

Next I embellished the rest of the grip.

Last I added a 'butt' to the wand to increase the overall length of the grip. This is essentially just a giant glob of hot glue.  I added extra glue over the glob to make it more interesting.  This also served to add extra weight behind the 'handle' and make the handle the balance point of the wand.

I stopped adding glue to the end once the balance was right.

Now with the wands glued, it was time to paint them.

I used a black base coat, then successive layers of brown, from dark to light.  Each coat was thinner than the last, so that the deeper crevices remained darkest.  The final lightest brown I only painted onto the glue embellishment, and did two coats to increase the brightness.

I let the paint dry overnight.  The paint rubs off of the glue easily, so I coated the wands in a glossy polyurethane to seal them.  Overall I was quite happy with how these turned out, and the project overall was pretty simple.  It would also be easy to add further embellishments (tassels, beads, etc) to give them more variety.

DIY: Cornhole set (bean bag toss) boards and bags

This is my attempt to make a cornhole set using these instructions:
https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/outdoors/structures/how-to-build-a-regulation-cornhole-set

I did pretty much this entire project in my apartment using a hand saw, a jigsaw, and a cordless power drill.  If you have an actual workshop and clamps and benches etc this would be a lot easier, but if you have a tiny amount of space and a few power tools you can still make it work!

Materials:

I used 2 pre-cut 24x48 inch sheets of plywood for the faces of my boards. For the edges and legs I used 3 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick board because it was cheaper than actual 2x4s. and seemed easier to cut given my limited supplies.

I needed enough edging board to line two 24x48 inch rectangles along with legs.  This meant 4 pieces 48 inches long, and 4 pieces 22.5 inches long (24 inches wide minus two 3/4 inch wide boards).  Plus 4 legs 11.5 inches long. 

I additionally bought a whole pile of indoor/outdoor use screws and four pairs of nuts and bolts to attach the legs to the frames.

For the bags we used two different colors of a thick indoor/outdoor fabric (you are technically supposed to use duck cloth, but we asked the fabric store people what would be an acceptable substitute and they pointed us toward the 'denim and related' fabric section; we found a fabric we liked that came in two different colors).  We used a sewing machine and filled the bags with dry Navy Beans.

Building:

Frames: First I cut the boards to make the edge frame.  Again, building a rectangle that sits under a 48x24 inch rectangle, I cut two pieces 48 inches long and 2 pieces 22.5 inches long per frame.  These were all drilled together with two screws per joint.  Remember to pre-drill your holes!  If you own clamps, use them! I do not, so I used my hands, which is dangerous and not recommended.  Also you probably should be doing all this in a well ventilated room because there is lots of sawdust which is probably bad for you to breathe. 

With the rectangles complete, I next attached the plywood tops.  Remember when you are drilling down into the edge frame that there are screws already inside of it!  If the frame doesn't seem to be lining up perfectly with the plywood board, you may be able to flex your frame a little to make it line up.  The boards I used were a little warped, but pliable enough to put back into position.

Next I needed to cut out the holes in the boards.  The center of the hole is 12 inches from either side and 9 inches from the top.  The hole is 6 inches in diameter.  I didn't have a compass, so I used a pencil and piece of string to make the circle (3 inch radius).

I used the power drill to drill a hole within the circle wide enough to fit the jigsaw, then used the jigsaw to cut out the circle.  This was actually my first time using the jigsaw, so the circles are Not Great, but they were good enough for me.

At this point I spent awhile sanding down the boards and particularly the holes to help hide my lack of carpentry skills.   

Legs:

The legs start as 11.5 inch long pieces.  Mark the board 1 3/4 inches from the top on the center line.  Draw a circle using that point as the center with a 1 3/4 inch radius.  Cut this with a jigsaw to make a curved top to your leg.

Flip your board upside down.  Place the curved top of your leg into the corner of your frame, so that the leg points upward, and is flush against the long-edge of the frame.  You want to drill a hole through the frame and the leg that is at the midline for the edge height-wise, and the midline of your leg depth-wise.  Place bolt through the hole, and see how well your leg rotates.

If you are really bad at using a jigsaw like I am, your leg will not move well.  Make the curve of the leg steeper by removing more wood until it actually rotates in and out when attached to the board.

Final unpainted product:

Painting:

I painted mine a very simple black edge with white top.  I'm planning on re-painting them each year for different parties/gatherings, and wanted a simple base.  The boards absorbed far more paint than I expected, and they probably need a few more coats of paint than I had time to give them.

Bags:

Officially these bags should be 6 inches square, but we made them a bit smaller by cutting 6 inch squares of fabric so that once sewn they are closer to 5 inches square.

You will need 4 bags of each color, so 8 squares of each color fabric.

These are a very simple sewing project if you have a sewing machine: Pin the two sides together, sew the edges, and leave a 1 1/2 inch gap on one side. Use this gap to invert the bags (so the sewn edge is now inside) and fill the bags with navy beans.  We hand-stitched the first few closed, then realized we could actually still use the sewing machine to close them because we hadn't filled them too full with beans.

   And there you have it! Boards and bags!

  Much to my own surprise the boards and bags held up great for our party and will be in fine shape for the next event!