Project Cho Chang: Wand

Instead of shelling out ~$30 per wand, I decided to make my own. I searched online, because I knew someone had to have tried making their own wand. This was the best tutorial: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-an-awesome-Harry-Potter-wand-from-a-sheet-of-/ 

First start off with a sheet of paper, and curl from the bottom right hand corner.

 Just keep rolling, just keep rolling, just keep rolling.

After rolling about half of sheet, you can start to loosen the top of the wand. You want it to look like a really thin cone, kinda like those cones you use to spin cotton candy with.

Tah-Dah. Now where's my cotton candy..

To add stability, since the wand is currently hollow, I stuff small bits of paper through the wider end by using a stick and a pencil. Again, the urban outfitter's catalog has proven to be very useful to me. Our wands now possess the essence of looking fashionably cheap, but expensive.

I keep stuffing until the entire wand is filled, then close the bigger end by folding down the edges and wrapping paper around it.

Next, I make the "handle" of the wand. It was too hard to recreate the wands they had in the movies, so I just made up my own.

My tools: tape and twine. (If you say that fast, it kind of sounds like "turpentine" with a funny accent. ha ha?) 

First add glue to the handle, and spread around the area where you want your handle to be.

Then wrap the twine around the handle area, and add tape at the two ends to hold the twine in place until the glue dries. 

There could've been more pictures of the process, but I needed two hands for this part.

Now, time to start painting.

Paint the entire wand.

To add some color and to make it look more "magical," I take gold and silver nail polish and paint the handle.

Then I finish it by taking some clear top coat nail polish to add some shine to the handle.

This is Alane's wand.

My wand is the on the right, it was the guinea pig of this process. Whatever I wanted to test out, I would test on my wand first. That's why it's a bit tacky looking. Ah, if only they were real. haha, the things I could do..