Golden Rod

Sometime, once upon a time ago, Julie gave us a wizarding wand challenge. Two-and-a-half months later, I finally got mine done.


Since I didn't have a hot-glue gun at the time, and then I bought the wrong size glue sticks, by the time I was done procrastinating and about ready to make my wand, it was time for a visit home.


My wand is different from everyone else's because I was allowed to use a real stick! Our dad had found a really cool stick he thought would make a good wand, and the other AuralArtists agreed that I could paint it up and use it as my wand.


It's approximately 12 1/2 inches long and made to resemble larch wood (my Pottermore wand). Unfortunately, there is no phoenix feather core. Oh well.


The designs were still done using hot glue. The handle got a criss-cross pattern, and the rest of it was just sort of haphazardly dripped on. My family says it looks just like me: unplanned, spontaneous, and a little reckless.


It may not look so impressive at first, but the real charm is when you see it up-close. All the natural wood fibers and knots and cracks give my wand all sorts of character.


















I honestly wasn't too thrilled with the wand-making idea at first. It sounded fun, but I didn't know what I would do with it after it was done. Now, though, I'm very glad I made it, because even though I still don't know what to do with it, I love it to bits.

Dotty Wand

I finished my wand!

Okay ... so it isn't the prettiest project. This stuff is a lot harder than it looks!

My wand is fairly short to fit my little hands, and it features a candle waxy tip and polka dot handle.

I think that it's pretty charming!

Wizarding Wands

Something you never knew and never thought you'd need to know:
photographing wands is really quite hard when you're fairly amateur.


As I may have mentioned, I joined Pottermore nearly a year ago as a beta tester. Boy, did it require a lot of patience to be a beta tester. Potions going amiss, no dueling, the purple screen of death... That's a story for a different time, though.


I was thrilled when I joined and was told that a) I have a 10 3/4" holly unicorn hair slightly springy wand b) I'm a Gryffindor. My last year has been pretty satisfying/entertaining knowing I'm a Gryffindor (I even have the sweatshirt).


So when it was time to do my wand, I knew I wanted to try making the right wand. Here's fun things about making wands:


a. The instructions we had were a bit too basic and crazy hard to use as is.
b. I had to improvise a lot.
c. Once you get started, you may accidentally make two (like me).
d. You probably want to use a large glue gun, not small. I did both my wands with a small glue gun and had a really hard time filling them all the way.
e. Be careful with how much paper you use. One wand ended up getting a bunch cut off because otherwise it was too bulky around. The other was almost not enough paper.

The green one is the one I tried to make look like holly. Funny thing about holly, though. It's very hard to find a picture of holly wood online. Go ahead, do a search for it. You end up getting Hollywood results. And when you get holly results, it's the leaves. I kind of ended up making up what holly wood looks like. Oh well.


I actually used an itty bitty crochet hook to make "unicorn hair" which I actually did insert into the green wand. The other wand has a glue core, which Ollivander probably frowns on.


I'd filled the wands literally weeks before I ever got around to painting them. My wands were well on their way within two weeks of me posting the challenge. Then they got stalled. Then I visited my mom. Then the wands were magically done!

And before you ask, there's a bit of viney bits going on, but mostly that thought didn't work out in execution. Oh well.

I don't actually know what I'm going to do with them now that they're all done. Truth be told, I misplaced them for a few weeks after I brought them back to my house. So until I know what to do with them, I'll leave them on my desk and see how far they travel around my home before I come up with a real idea for them.

Hearty Wizard Wand

W-a-a-a-a-y back in April, Julie issued a Group Challenge. We were to create our own Wizard Wand, like one you would own as a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She pointed us to some directions on the web that appeared pretty straight forward. But it seems it took all four of us a bit of time to figure out just how to make our wands.

My first step was to pop over to Pottermore and go through the first chapters to get sorted into my house and find out what kind of wand chose me - for the wand always chooses the wizard! Turns out I am in the house of Ravenclaw (hooray!) and my wand is an 11-3/4" pear wood solid wand with a core of phoenix feather.

So while Julie was visiting one weekend, we hunkered down in my studio and started the process. I wanted to make mine as authentic as possible, matching the wand that chose me in Pottermore. Julie had already begun to make her wands, so was giving me some pointers. I did my best to follow the directions. It's a bit tricky to get the hot glue to fill up the tube. We ended up having to poke some extra holes in the middle of the wand and get some glue in through the side. 

I checked online to see what pear wood looks like and tried my best to mix paint to mimic the wood. Tricky, that. Julie had to help me. The fun part was decorating the wand with hot glue after the first coat of paint. I like the way my hearts and vines turned out. The holes I had to make to get the extra glue became knots in the wood. Looks pretty neat!

One thing I wish I had done is put a feather into my tube before filling it. I didn't think about that until too late. Shucks. Of course, finding a phoenix willing to give me a tail feather did present a problem. My final bit of fun was to use some glittery hot glue on the tip of the wand. It looks like it's ready to make some magic happen!

Of course, the best magic is the fun the four of us have together as we plan and execute our projects. I imagine you'll be seeing three more wizard wands in the near future.

Now ... 

Swish and Flick!

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Group Challenge: Wands

I love my family. They humor me in the best possible ways.

As I stated in my last entry, I'm trained as a children and teen librarian, and I love Harry Potter. So when they were wondering what we should do next and one of them suggested I should pick, I laughed and told me if they asked me to pick, I'd say we should make wands. They all agreed. So, HOORAY! Wands!

The instructions we're using are here:

Harry Potter Wand Tutorial

  

The wands use paper, hot glue, and paint. Seems simple-ish. Depending on dexterity, it's not too hard to figure out how to do hearts or dots on the finished product. You can paint the heck out of shades. Plus, can't you just see an awesome little leaf or vine on it? Yep, wands are coming up next.