I am one of the biggest Harry Potter nerds I know; and darn proud of it too. I recently made a deal with my hubby that if he read the Harry Potter series, I would read the Dark Tower series by Stephen King and we did. We completed the challenge and now I have another Harry Potter nerd in my life! Yay! That being said, I like to do fun and creative photo shoots as much as I can and thanks to Pintrest, I was inspired to do a Harry Potter themed couples shoot with my hubs. But first, I had to procure us some wands. What better way to do that than to make them? Making our wands was cheaper and way more fun than purchasing some off the internet. Here’s how I did it:
I went to Michael’s in Greeley and picked up my supplies:
Dowel Rod
Cheap acrylic paint (I got brown, black, red, blue, and yellow)
Glue Sticks (and glue gun if you don’t have one)
Paint brushes
When I was ready to create our wands, I took the dowel rod and used branch trimmers to cut it. I made each wand the length of my forearm.
Then, I took my sticks and added the glue. I was very liberal in my glue application for the wand handles. I glued directly onto the stick and went around the top layering as I went to create the handle.
Next I used the hot glue to create some simple designs to go down the wand as you can see in the next photo.
To get the tip of the wand looking nicer than a broken stick, I used the glue gun in a similar way to the handle and made a little tip. I used my fingers to smooth it out, but if you do that, please be very careful as that glue will still be really hot to touch.
Once I was satisfied with the handle and the details on the lengths of them, I let them dry for a little while. (Hot glue dries pretty quick so I think I only had it dry for about 15 minutes.) Then I started painting them. I started with the brown. On Jarrett’s I mixed a little brown and yellow to get a lighter shade and on mine I mixed brown, blue, and black to get a darker shade.
After they first coat dried, Jarrett and I took our respective wands and added some color. (I know the wands in movies aren’t colorful, but we used our imagination and got a little creative anyway.)
After the paint was dry, it was time for our photo shoot! I wanted to do a creative couples shoot with our wands so we headed out to the back yard with a tripod and my books and went for it. I used a tripod and the self-timer to get the shots of the two of us. It was challenging but I was so excited about the results. Enjoy the shots from the afternoon!
