Harry Potter Wand Bookmarks set1 - The Golden Trio

I've been playing around with iron beads again and made this set of colourful wizarding wand bookmarks for the characters of Harry Potter, Ronald 'Ron' Weasley and Hermione Granger. These were not made to look realistic at all but were instead made using a range of colours to represent each wand, as I did not want to end up with half a dozen brown wand shapes with no personality to them. Each wand bookmark is 20cm long and between 1 to 2 cm wide.

If anyone is interested I have provided the pattern for each bookmark below so you can make them yourself. Feel free to change the colours or shapes as you see fit. Each pattern is also a desktop wallpaper, similar to my Harry Potter Wand Wallpaper Collection seen HERE. These wallpapers are sized 1366x768 so you can either "Save Image As" to save to your computer or alternatively you can select "Set As Desktop Background".

Ladybugs

This is a little loveliness of ladybugs. Literally that is what a group of these beautiful beetles are called; a loveliness. Whether you know them as ladybugs, lady beetles or ladybirds, these tiny insects always seem so magical to me. Despite them being best known as red beetles, they also come in many other colours, including the ones seen here.

This was originally a white shirt featuring half a dozen ladybugs on its front. The shirt was no longer wanted but I thought I could make good use of the printed ladybugs on it. I cut each one out, sewed black fabric to their backs and filled them with plastic stuffing pellets. The smallest beetle (yellow) measures about 5cm wide by about 6cm and the largest beetle (green) measures about 8.5cm wide by about 8cm, with the others ranging in sizes between these two.

These ladybugs were simple to make as the design was already done for me, and as I prefer to use recycled materials this was a fun way to create something new from something old and unwanted. The plastic stuffing pellets gives these beetle a nice weight to them so they are enjoyable to hold or toss about but also very sweet to just have sitting about.

Totoro Mini Figures

While browsing youtube I found a few cold porcelain recipes that I thought could be fun and decided to give one a go. Not knowing what to make I ended up playing around with a small amount of the clay until I ended up with a shape I thought could be a cute Totoro. After making two more smaller versions I set them aside to dry. Once completely dry I painted each one with acrylic paints, added a layer of mod podge to the completed pieces and was done.

Trying Something new I made these three tiny Totoro's from clay. These mini forest spirits measure only 4cm tall for the grey totoro (which I actually painted silver), 3cm tall for the middle sized blue totoro, and a tiny 2.5cm tall for the smallest white totoro. I had a lot of fun experimenting and playing with this new craft, it is definitely something I want to revisit in the future when I have a better idea planed out of what I wish to make.

Acromantula (inspired by the Harry Potter Series)

While walking through the bush the other day, I made the mistake of following a trail of spiders. At the time it seemed harmless, but not until it was too late did I remember that this was the advice Hagrid had given to Harry and Ron when they discovered the lair of acromantula's living in the Forbidden Forest. Thankfully I didn't run into an acromantula as large as Aragog, but as spiders go, I did meet a big one.

This baby acromantula is surprisingly cute for a deadly creature. Even with the highest classification of XXXXX I can see why Hagrid was taken with the baby Aragog, not that I'm tempted to keep this little fella around for too long. Once fully grown his size alone would make this difficult, but really I just couldn't live with the guilt of him eating my family and friends that may pop round to visit.

The pattern for this acromantula was created by combining a few different patterns, along with a few alterations I made myself, until I had a design I was happy with. I know acromantual's are described as jet-black in colour but I didn't want his eight black eyes to be lost in a black body, so I instead used this thick dark material that still allowed for all eight black safety eyes to stand out.

Sewing this acromantula was a little fiddly, especially when it came to turning it out as I had stuffed the legs and sewn them into the body as I went along. This meant that when it came time to turning the body inside out, (the right way round), I had eight thick legs to maneuver through the opening. After this it was easy enough to attached the safety eyes and fill the body with plastic pellets before closing him up.

If acromantula's weren't so intent on eating people I'm sure they would become more popular, especially if they looked as adorable as this little one. The pellet filled body gives this acromantual a nice weight to it and also makes him very tossable and with the use of two different sized safety eyes the finished effect of this acromantula is exactly what I imagined it to be.