My 3 sisters are throwing a combined birthday party next month. And the theme they chose is Harry Potter.
As my gift to them I am making a bunch of the props and decorations.
So here I will give a , sort of, step-by-step on how i made the various items.
Be warned though, I'm pretty bad at remembering to take photos of my process.
So first of ...
I started with a past-its-prime christmas decoration. The first step was to liberate the reindeer from Santa's sleigh and also rip off all the burnt-out Christmas lights.
I left this job to my boyfriend (what else is he for?)
Now that I had a clean reindeer-shaped armature, I could start my experimenting.
I started by digging around in my piles of junk for some old Christmas lights that I knew "must be around here somewhere".
Once the fairy lights were retrieved from the depths of the "craft-crate"; I started figuring out where I wanted the lights to be.
I used one string of lights around the face and neck and strung the second one through his legs.
Then I tucked the ends of both lights into the body so that they too would have some glow.
I needed something to keep those damn fairylights in place.
So I wrapped the deer with cling-film. Which already made the Patronus look pretty cool.
But I wanted the Patronus to glow rather then be separate spots of light; so I knew I had to diffuse (thank you, film school).
After a bunch of experimenting with fabric, paper, nylon stockings etc; I eventually settled on the white part of a Pick n Pay shopping bag. They are solid enough to give a nice diffused glow and I have a ton of them on the top of my fridge; so it is a cheap resource.
I tested the shopping bags before wrapping them around the armature to make sure the fairylights wouldn't melt the plastic. They didn't.
I used about 5 shopping bags to cover the whole stag. I started by cutting off the bottom seam and 2 handle seams, and then cut out the blue and red parts.
This left me with 2 large white rectangles per bag. I cut these rectangles in half, length-wise, and then taped all the pieces together to get a long strip.
Then I wrapped and tucked this all around the stag; using a separate strip for each leg to reduce bulk on the torso.
But even though it's a radiant reindeer; it's not quite ethereal enough to be a convincing Patronus.
So back to the experimentation lab.
After some trial and error (on a scrap piece of plastic) I settled on a marbling technique; which I achieved by mixing 1 part PVA wood glue with 1 part water and adding a few drops of blue food colorant.
I then liberally painted this mixture all over the stag.
You could use mod podge instead of watered-down PVA; but I already had the wood glue so it was cheaper for me this way.
Because the stag is wrapped in plastic, the "paint" wouldn't go on smoothly and pooled in certain places. This meant that the finished Patronus has darker and lighter spots.
I then let the whole thing dry for 24 hours and sealed with a lacquer varnish spray that I bought for the next project (broomstick and wands)
"Prongs" stands about 90cm tall and lights up by 2 plugs that come out at his back-legs.
At the venue we are planning to place him in front of some dry ice, so he can come prancing out of the mist.
If you like Harry Potter crafts, watch this space as there are several more items in this "collection.
See you next week!
As my gift to them I am making a bunch of the props and decorations.
So here I will give a , sort of, step-by-step on how i made the various items.
Be warned though, I'm pretty bad at remembering to take photos of my process.
So first of ...
PATRONUS
"Harry flung himself out from behind the bush and pulled out his wand.‘EXPECTO PATRONUM!’ he yelled. And out of the end of his wand burst, not a shapeless cloud of mist, but a blinding, dazzling, silver animal. He screwed up his eyes, trying to see what it was. It looked like a horse."
We chose to make the classic stag Patronus, not only because it is the most recognizable; but also because we already had suitable armature so it cut a LOT of time from this project.
I started with a past-its-prime christmas decoration. The first step was to liberate the reindeer from Santa's sleigh and also rip off all the burnt-out Christmas lights.
I left this job to my boyfriend (what else is he for?)
Now that I had a clean reindeer-shaped armature, I could start my experimenting.I started by digging around in my piles of junk for some old Christmas lights that I knew "must be around here somewhere".
Once the fairy lights were retrieved from the depths of the "craft-crate"; I started figuring out where I wanted the lights to be.
I used one string of lights around the face and neck and strung the second one through his legs.
Then I tucked the ends of both lights into the body so that they too would have some glow.
I needed something to keep those damn fairylights in place.So I wrapped the deer with cling-film. Which already made the Patronus look pretty cool.
But I wanted the Patronus to glow rather then be separate spots of light; so I knew I had to diffuse (thank you, film school).
I tested the shopping bags before wrapping them around the armature to make sure the fairylights wouldn't melt the plastic. They didn't.
I used about 5 shopping bags to cover the whole stag. I started by cutting off the bottom seam and 2 handle seams, and then cut out the blue and red parts.
This left me with 2 large white rectangles per bag. I cut these rectangles in half, length-wise, and then taped all the pieces together to get a long strip.
Then I wrapped and tucked this all around the stag; using a separate strip for each leg to reduce bulk on the torso.
Woohoow! Look at that beauty!
But even though it's a radiant reindeer; it's not quite ethereal enough to be a convincing Patronus.
So back to the experimentation lab.
After some trial and error (on a scrap piece of plastic) I settled on a marbling technique; which I achieved by mixing 1 part PVA wood glue with 1 part water and adding a few drops of blue food colorant.I then liberally painted this mixture all over the stag.
You could use mod podge instead of watered-down PVA; but I already had the wood glue so it was cheaper for me this way.
Because the stag is wrapped in plastic, the "paint" wouldn't go on smoothly and pooled in certain places. This meant that the finished Patronus has darker and lighter spots.
I then let the whole thing dry for 24 hours and sealed with a lacquer varnish spray that I bought for the next project (broomstick and wands)
DONE!!!
"Prongs" stands about 90cm tall and lights up by 2 plugs that come out at his back-legs.At the venue we are planning to place him in front of some dry ice, so he can come prancing out of the mist.
If you like Harry Potter crafts, watch this space as there are several more items in this "collection.
See you next week!
Check out the other projects in this collection at:
https://larissadesigns.blogspot.com/2017/12/harry-potter-collection-sorting-hat.html
https://larissadesigns.blogspot.co.za/2018/02/diy-harry-potter-collection-signage.html
https://larissadesigns.blogspot.co.za/2018/02/diy-harry-potter-collection-signage.html
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