Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Harry Potter Party: Part Two

Fireplace, Great Hall floating candles, the Sorting Hat and the Platform 9 3/4 brick wall are today!
I found the inspiration for the fireplace letters and the brick wall HERE and another brick wall HERE(actually, the brick wall was in LOTS of posts that I found), the Great Hall floating candles HERE (again, saw these in lots of different places), and the Sorting Hat was HERE (this was just a set of picture instructions).

So, let's start with the fireplace!  In book one, "The Sorcerer's Stone", Harry's acceptance letters to Hogwarts keep getting intercepted by his Uncle.  One day hundreds and hundreds of letters come shooting out of the fireplace.  I saw a picture recreating the scene on the blog I linked to and knew I had to try it!

I didn't want to use actual envelopes.  So I found a .png file of the back of an envelope.  Then I found a .png of a Hogwarts crest.  Pulled them up in Photoshop and created the back
Then I typed up the front and printed 2 to a page on parchment paper.
I used invisible quilting thread to hang the letters from the ceiling.  I went with the quilting thread rather than fishing line for 2 reasons.  1 - it's pretty strong, but really thin, which makes it less noticeable and 2 - I already had it on hand :)  We just used thumbtacks to attach them to the ceiling and tape to hook the thread to the paper.  2 tips for this project -you really need 2 people to do this project.  One person to either be on the ladder and the other to be on the ground directing where you hang things.  It's really had to judge where the next letter should go when you're on the ladder.  It's a pain to get down and realize that it doesn't look right.  Tip #2 - take a few pictures as you go.  For some reason it gave me a better idea of where the holes or gaps were.
My husband had the idea of cutting one of the letters in half and putting it on each side of the glass in the fireplace.  It looked really cool!
The Great Hall floating candles were time consuming, but easy to do.  I bought battery powered tea lights at W*l-M*rt.  They were cheaper there than Am*zon.  I was told to check out dollar stores, but ours didn't have any when I needed them.  We tied the invisible thread around the flames on the candle, hot glued 1/4 of a piece of paper to the candle to make it look longer and again, hung them with thumbtacks to the ceiling.

We chose to have the candles at the bottom of the roll of paper rather than the top.  Just a personal preference of the birthday girl :)

The sorting hat was a project that turned out cool, but not how I had pictured in my head.  I started with a dollar store witch's hat, brown felt, fun foam, fake brown leather and hot glue.  I had everything on hand but the felt and the hat.  So this ended up being a really inexpensive project for me!

I covered it in the brown felt first just to give it some stability (dollar store witch hats are rather flimsy). Then I cut out a few shapes out of the fun foam to create the eyes and mouth and glued them on with hot glue.
Then I glued the faux leather on and scrunched it around till I kind of liked it
There you go!  It doesn't look quite the same after the party.  The kids had a great time playing with it and things shifted a little.  But I can pull everything back into place.

Last but not least is my Platform 9 3/4 brick wall.  I wanted the kids to be able to walk through the wall to get into the house.  This was another inexpensive project since I already had the fabric and the paint.  I bought a roll of masking tape for $.97.  Then I took an exacto knife to the edges of the tape and cut it up and mangled it a little.  I didn't want my "mortar" lines to be really straight.  I used my quilting ruler to put the tape down evenly
I was using spray paint, so we took it outside
 I started to run out of paint, but I think it kind of added to the brick look.
Pulled the tape off and loved the results!!
I know that was kind of a lot of information.  I'm wondering if I should have broken it into more posts??  Oh well.  The next post will probably be the little projects and then I'll do one more that will be a basic walk through of the party in action with pictures my wonderful friend took for me!! 

2 comments:

moving foward said...

As an obsessive Harry Potter fan, THIS IS AMAZING! Well done :)
<3 Erin
http://movingforward1313.blogspot.com/

Jennifer Whyskers said...

Oh my gosh that is so cool!