Harry Potter Wands - DIY Crafts for Kids! Perfect for Birthday Parties or Costumes!

Hi! My name is Olivia and I am a mother of two fun little girls, preschool teacher, and owner of Olivia’s Ultimate. I love to sew, cook, eat, shop, and craft!

When Jill asked me to guest blog with crafting tutorials I laughed out loud. Ironic since I have started and stopped my own little blog about five million times promising myself to keep up with posts! 😉 However, this may be the perfect opportunity to force myself to share all the fun things I get to create and not feel the pressure of keeping up with my own blog…only the pressure of Jill. Kidding.

So for my first tutorial I kept trying to think fall. Pumpkins, ghosts, turkeys…aack! As a preschool teacher we do handprint crafts daily and I couldn’t get them out of my head. After all, you really need/want me to show you how to dip your hands in paint, right?

Luckily for you my oldest daughter’s birthday is coming up and I am in party planning mode! She is OBSESSED with Harry Potter.

When she first told me she wanted a HP party I said, “But baby, some of your friends have never even read the books or seen the movie.” Apparently that didn’t matter to her. Obsessions transcend all hesitations of others “not getting it.”

So for the last few weeks I’ve been diligently pinning Harry Potter party idea after idea onto my trusty Pinterest board and today I started doing instead of pinning. First up, WIZARD WANDS for Olivander’s !

As most 7 year olds in the Muggle World will be arriving at the party sans wands we must provide them with one, right? Here is how we made ours.

First get yourself some sticks. Not just any sticks but these long bamboo/reed things from the dried grass and leaves section at Hobby Lobby. Lucky for me they were 50% this week and cost me $5! Sweet! These bamboo sticks could make me a million wands I’m sure. They are also all different thicknesses, which will make them each unique just like the real deal from Olivander’s.

Next, grab yourself a glue gun, scissors, and a can of spray paint. You can choose any color paint but I went with brown to get close to wood. We’ve decided to also go with black and gold for the others we will be making this week.

As someone who has had a lot of experience with spray paints (no you wont’ find me under a bridge or on an overpass…shhh…) I find that Krylon works best. It gives off an even spray and doesn’t clog. I did a project recently where I refinished two bar stools. Five cans later from another brand…grrr….Trust me. Go with Krylon.

Take your scissors and carefully cut a piece of the bamboo stick. You can cut through these and you want to make a clean cut as they will split and splinter. Please have an adult do this and not a child. Also, don’t use your fabric scissors, I will come hunt you down if you do. I made my wand a little over 10” but you can make them as long or as short as you want. Varying lengths is great!

Next, heat up your glue gun until the glue is nice and hot. Carefully start gluing a design around one end of the stick. I started about 1 third of the way down and just glued a spiral up the stick, turning the stick in my hands and squeezing a steady stream as I went along. I then glue the ends with balls of hot glue because the sticks are hollow. If you want to get real fancy you could insert something inside and get real cool by saying the wand has a magical core of phoenix feather!

Give the glue a bit of time to dry before putting it down other wise you will end up gluing it to the surface of your table! Once the glue has dried take it outside and set it on a surface you don’t mind getting spray paint on. As you can see I have a large piece of Styrofoam that I often use so that I don’t get paint all over my grass. I am very sure my lawn guys are always wondering why my grass is blue, yellow, white, black…whatever color I am using that week on a project. Believe me the foam will help with small projects like this!

Shake your can real well and spray and even coat onto the stick covered in glue. Shake your foam base a little to move the stick around and continue to spray the wand until everything is covered. Let dry.