Harry Potter/Halloween Crafts

I am linking this up to Cauldron Crafts.

I can't seem to get their button to work but I'll try again later.

Last year my darling daughter turned 9 and requested a Harry Potter party. So I decided to post some of the crafts I made for that party. I preface this by saying that I am just as big a Harry Potter fan as my daughter so I used it as an excuse to go,...oh how shall I say it,... hmm, insane. Yes, insane is the word. The kids ended up using them for Halloween and her birthday as well!

This was the costume I made for both of my kids for Halloween and the party. The robe was made from fleece and they both still play with them. I crocheted the Gryffindor scarves myself. The wands are made from construction paper, hot glue, paint, etc. from this youtube video.

Here's a close-up of one of the wands. The wands I made for the kids were brown like this. The wands I made for my husband and myself (we taught classes) had a blacker base and were thinner. They actually looked much cooler because I remembered to rub darker paint over the gold to age it. Of course, I cannot lay my hands on any of those because my children have misplaced them.
I even went so far as to make a robe for my daughter's American Girl doll out of an old black t-shirt I had.

I know. I'm a geek. Now that we've got that out of the way...

Each child received an invitation from Hogwarts which included the second letter regarding supplies. The front door was adorned with the Platform 9 3/4 sign. Upon arrival, each child reached into my witches hat and drew out a pin denoting which house they were in. I just copied the different house crests onto a document and printed onto photo paper. I cut them out and hot glued a pin back onto them. There were only two houses represented and we used that as how to separate the kids into classes.
They also received textbooks (none of which can my daughter now locate) and they got to make their own wands. Hubbie attached dowels to these cool little handles and each child got to color, glitter, or otherwise decorate her wand.

Of course, my kids had to do those too. Everyone also received a Marauder's map I printed and folded from this site. This was so cool and I appreciate the person who created it so much!
It starts out like this (once you've cut and folded it, that is!)...

opens to this...

and finally to this!

Britta rocks for coming up with this!

I also made robes for hubby and I. He taught potions...

and I taught Divination and Transfiguration. I used a Magic 8 ball wrapped in tin foil as my crystal ball for Divination and we magically transfigured jelly beans to have bizarre flavors. For this I used Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans which came in a game form. They had to spin to see which color they had to eat. There were two possible flavors for each color; one good, one not so good (toothpaste, dog food, etc.).

Yes, that's my very own little Harry Potter there on the right! And because of this party, he insisted on a Star Wars party; we ended up doing Jedi training at his party so I kind of went a bit insane for his too!