Pottermore: The Boons of a Sleepless Night

I could not sleep.  It was not because I wanted to register for Pottermore.  I simply lay awake hoping to get tired soon.  Just before 3am PST, I decided to stay up for a bit.  I remembered that Pottermore registrations were taking place in the middle of the night and, lo and behold, at 3am, it was the magical hour.  I put in my clue, found the quill and was in!

I Think I'm a Hufflepuff...

An Open Letter of Thanks to JK Rowling

Twelve years ago I received an email from my mother-in-law asking permission to get my oldest daughter a Harry Potter book.  I hadn't heard of Harry Potter but I couldn't imagine my daughter, who was an avid reader, turning down a children's book or why she would need permission to read one.  In her email, my mother-in-law said that the reason she was asking was because the book had generated some controversy.  Controversy?  From a children's book?  Bring it on!  Without batting an eye, I replied that, yes, she should definitely get the book.

After reading it, we learned of the issue to which my mother-in-law had been referring: objections to the presence of magic in Harry's world.  I simply saw Harry as a protagonist to whom my kids could relate.  The idea that his world included magic seemed much less important than that Harry had to find his strength in working to defeat a terrible and relentless enemy.  Best of all, the characters and situations in the books created relevant parallels with the non-fiction world in which my children were living.

The Potter books not only became instant classics in our house but they provided fuel for conversations with our children--points of understanding around which much learning about life occurred.  We referred to the books when helping them wrestle with social quandaries or considering the politics of life.  It became a standing joke that "All I Need to Know in Life I Learned From Harry Potter." The Potter books joined the ranks of other epic stories that were also analogs to real life.

When the first Harry Potter movie came out, we saw it.  It wasn't as close to the book as we had hoped but we didn't mind because it brought the characters and world to life and that was the point.  I refined my meager sewing skills as I copied the costumes from this movie, making school uniforms and Quidditch costumes.  These were worn to book release parties where my kids delightedly won contests: one for her amazing recall of Harry Potter trivia and the other for her appearances as characters from the books.  Our wizard costume collection grew over time as the kids got older and their parents wanted in on the action.

What we are faced with, in the release of the final movie, is not only the bittersweet end of an era but what feels like the end of childhood for my kids who are now at university and secondary school.  It is the closure of a very distinct and well-remembered chapter in our collective lives.

Thank you, JK Rowling, for bringing together my family, giving us something to talk about, and creating a world in which we will always dwell together.  It was amazing to discover the elements of Harry's magical world but it was even more amazing to refer to this world and it's populace while helping our children explore the realities of the one in which we must all dwell.  Your books gave us a means to really connect with our children that has been incredibly helpful and fantastically fun.  You gave us more dinner conversations and "ride home from school" conversations than I can count and, in so doing, kept our kids talking to and confiding in us for the last dozen years.  You are amazing and we owe you so much!

Fly Your Freak Flag Day

May 25th is both Towel Day (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and Geek Pride Day. The Los Angeles City Council declared May 25, 2007 Star Trek Day. It's pretty clear that the day is very special in the hearts of geeks. So fly your "freak flag" and celebrate your favorite icon of geek subculture, whatever it may be.

I declare May 25th to be "Fly Your Freak Flag Day."  So...

• Wear your favorite Cosplay outfit.
• Carry your magic wand.
• Attach a communicator pin to your shirt.
• Pack your sonic screwdriver in your purse.
• Bring your Dungeon Master's guide or your graphing calculator manual to work and display it proudly on your desk.
• Shout "For The Horde!" or "You Shall Not Pass!" randomly and loudly.
• Establish Reaver drill protocols.
• Write "Don't Panic" on sticky notes and distribute them everywhere.

It's time to let your inner geek shine!

Aged Paper Labels for Potion Bottles, Alchemy Labs, etc.

I enjoy making potion bottles, especially ones that look ancient.  However, an old-looking bottle requires a similarly aged label.  To create the effect of an aged label, I used a simple graphics program (in this case, MSPaint but you can use GIMP, Photoshop, etc.) to generate the label, then print and age it.  Because I want the printed elements of the label to look distressed (and because it's difficult to run anything but smooth sheets of paper through my printer), I aged the paper after the design was printed.

Some printer ink can’t stand up to this process.  The ink should be fairly color-fast.  Factory filled cartridges or those refilled with pigment-based ink tend to work well.  To check if your ink is colorfast, simply print something (or use paper you’ve already printed) and brush or splash water onto the printed page.  If the ink does not bleed, chances are your ink should work fine.  Try both black ink and color ink; you might find a difference.  If it does bleed, one way of dealing with this is to use a light table (or window in bright light) to trace your printing with pigment-based markers onto your paper (again, if unsure, test for colorfastness).


USING CLIP ART TO CREATE A SIMPLE LABEL

You can create an image for your label using a border or interesting clipart found online or in your own clipart collection.  On the left label for Syrup of Hellebore, I used a piece of scrollwork as the basis for the art.  On the right label for Powdered Root of Asphodel, I used and reoriented a single piece of scrollwork four times to create a stylized border.

In step one, I selected the scroll and turned it in the direction I wanted.

In step two, on the Hellebore label, I copied the scroll, pasted it and flipped it horizontally.  Then I made an oval and placed the mirror-image scrolls on either side of it.  In the second step of the Asphodel label, I copied the scroll, pasted it, flipped it, and repeated this for four sections to create the entire border.

Finally, I added the text part of the label and printed it.  I have, in the past. used a good brush-tip pen with colorfast ink to go over the printed lines and give a hand-quilled look.  This is another way to individualize your labels.

TRIM THE LABELS

The same label cut six different ways.

I suggest printing up several of the same label and subjecting them to variances in the aging and distressing process.  It’s hard to know exactly how these will turn out and this will give you a variety of choices for the final application.

Print the labels onto sturdy paper.  I used just plain white printer paper here and they turned out fine.  Before making them look old or distressed, decide how to cut them out.  It is important to give the paper label its final shape before aging it or the edges won’t seem as natural.  Cut it out or carefully tear it out.  Cutting can be done using standard scissors, fancy edge scissors, or other shape cutting tools.  You can either carefully trim it according to shape or give it another shape altogether.  See the picture for some different ideas about how to shape one single label.

AGING THE LABELS
To age your labels, lay them on a glass or ceramic plate.  Brew yourself some coffee or tea.  Drink your hot beverage but don’t discard the bag or grounds.  Instead, heap up the wet tea leaves or coffee grounds onto the labels.  Make a nice thin layer and extend it out past the edges of the label.  I tried several different teas and each gave a different effect.  

You can also mix up your leaves and grounds, laying them onto the label in different areas to give a really nice varied effect.  You can allow your labels to dry naturally like this.  This will give a light layer of color.  To deepen and intensify the colors you can put the plate in the microwave and heat for 15-30 seconds, depending on the size of label.

Starting from the upper left and going clockwise: coffee, black tea, mix of teas and coffee, green tea.

Allow the plate and contents to cool and then carefully remove the leaves or grounds.  You can either let the labels dry before moving on or you can begin augmenting your aged paper with distressed effects now.

DISTRESSING THE LABELS
Distressing, when done while the paper is still wet, will give a less defined edge to the drips and splatters you’ll be adding.  If the paper is dry, it will cause the first layer of coloring to bleed and create a darkened edge where the bleed ends.  Both are nice effects.

You can use brown vanilla extract, liquid food coloring, or watered-down tempera paints.  There are probably many water-based substances you can use as well to make the label appear as though it has been subjected to lots of abuse.  I tend to do most of my distressing with vanilla and yellow food coloring, and then add little bits of other colors spattered here and there.

If you don’t have a dropper for adding spots of color, use a small drinking straw (I like the narrow ones used as coffee stirrers).  Dip the straw in your liquid and then put your finger on the other end and you’ll be able to drip individual drops by loosening your finger pressure and letting air in this end.  For very small splatter marks, dip the end of a toothpick into the coloring liquid and dab the color on the paper deliberately.  

Tip your plate with the label on it to coax liquids to drip down the label, as it might if it were on the bottle at the time.

It’s also nice to dip the very top edge of the label directly into your liquid distressing medium where it will give a crisper color to the top edge making it appear as though liquid had accumulated here.

Allow all of this coloring to dry completely.


BURN MARKS
One way a label may have been inadvertently distressed over time is for the bottle it covered to have been hit with small sparks that burned it slightly.  Of course, some kinds of bottles may not have been exposed to fire so you might skip this step altogether.  For potion bottles, it's a nice little touch.  Burns could be in the form of small holes created when hot ash landed on the label and smoldered briefly.  Maybe the edge of the label caught fire in a ghastly potion-brewing explosion and burned a bit of it away.  Because some of these labels are very small, I decided against actually burning them as even a controlled burn might char more of it than it leaves behind.  Instead, I artfully cut the labels and used a permanent ink marker to “char” along the cut edges.

Roll, trim, reveal, "char."

To create a charred hole, you can fold or roll the paper around the point at which the hole appears.  Trim off the tip of this point.  Unroll the label and dab a brown marker along the edges.  Let the ink bleed into the paper a bit.  Finally, dab black marker along this edge but don’t allow it to bleed in as much as the brown.

These are some aged, distressed, and burnt labels.  They represent probably the most ancient and abused-looking results of this process and are a bit over-the-top.

SEALING THE LABELS
The label can be sealed with an acrylic varnish (but this is best done once it’s been applied to the surface of the bottle.  Use shiny or matte finish varnish depending on the look you are going for.

Another way of sealing the surfaced that I tend to prefer is to rub the surface with candle wax.  This gives a very uneven shine to the surface of the label which can be nice.  I have some old white candles that were once stored with a variety of other candles.  The other wax colors tainted the surface of the candles, making them grungy and perfect for sealing these distressed labels.  Just rub the side of the candle on the outer surface of the label.


APPLYING THE LABELS
The label can be applied with Modge Podge, craft glue, or spray adhesive.  Just apply a very thin layer to the back and stick in place.  Consider not applying the glue to one edge or corner.  Then, once it’s dry, curl the loose section, possibly tearing it a bit or making the edges ragged for a final flourish.

Syrup of Hellebore Bottle

This potion bottle project was created using eggshells and glue to cover a bottle.  The surface was then detail painted.  The process of using eggshells to create a cracked ceramic-looking surface is fairly time-consuming.  However, the effect is pretty good and the project goes much better when the bottle is covered a little at a time and allowed to dry between sections.

Step-by-step instructions for this bottle are available here: Eggshell-Covered Potion Bottle.

You can read about how I make these labels here: Aged Paper Labels

Green Gem Potion Bottle

This potion bottle is one of my kids' favorites.  It features a green gem, created using my Faux Gemstone technique which is set into a large black blob-like medallion made from polymer clay.  The medallion features tentacles which wrap around the bottle somewhat.  Two of them have been extended and wrapped around the neck of the bottle.  A similar green gem was set atop the cork stopper.

Although polymer clay does not permanently adhere to glass, the clay here has not been glued to the glass because it is wrapped around the glass, keeping it in place. 

The contents of this bottle are simply green colored water and vegetable oil.  The oil seems to have taken on a greenish color since I filled the bottle several years ago.  The strange bubbles in the top layer of the contents are the result of my shaking the bottle prior to taking the picture.  I have glued the cork permanently in place, making this a display bottle only.

Potion Ingredient Jar Set

These old jars were purchased off ebay as they are, with distressed lids.  Because I don't know what these bottles originally held, they couldn't be used for any spices that might go into food so they can only be used as props.  I filled each with something that looked like an ingredient and printed up labels on sticker paper.  I used a font that I liked to print the name of the contents and went over this with a permanent brush-tipped marker to give them a hand-quilled look. A basic black border is all that these required.  Anything else would have seemed like too much.  The ingredients and their labels are as follows:

• Dried Doxy Venom: turbinado sugar
• Beetle Eyes: black dragees (bought in a cake/candy decorating shop)
• Dessicated Rat Brains: bulk-purchased dried garbanzo beans
• Bowtruckle Skin: thin bark stripped off fallen branches
• Asphodel Leaf: tarragon
• Knarl Quills: pine needles cut to roughly equal lengths

Knotwork Potion Bottle

The purple started out as an eight-sided spice jar.  I started out by covering it in a layer of polymer clay.  To accomplish this, I rolled out the clay and covered the jar with the single sheet.  Then I poked this layer with pins.  Using my hands, I pushed the clay up against the jar tight while excess air was pushed out through the holes.  Then I smoothed over the surface to hide the holes.

I stamped out the design on another piece of clay and attached it to the original piece before firing.  To do this, I rolled out the piece of clay and dusted the surface with cornstarch.  Then I dusted the surface of the stamp with more cornstarch and pressed it into the clay.  I blew off as much cornstarch as I could before adhering the stamped section using a little liquid polymer clay.  I smoothed down the edges of the added piece using my finger. 

The bottle was then baked and the stamped section was later highlighted by covering it in black acrylic paint thinned with a little water and cleaning it off the top surface before it dried.  The neck was wrapped in twine and the twine ends finished with beads.  A brown polymer clay "tag" is also hung from the neck.  I intend to replace this with a piece of wood labeled using a wood burner.

Erumpent Horn Bottle

This magical ingredient bottle looks like a stick of dynamite because it contains something just as destructive, an Erumpet Horn.  I started out by covering this tall bottle in cleaned egg shells.  Working in sections, I brushed some glue in a small area of the bottle and pressed down a large piece of eggshell.  Then, using a toothpick, I spread out the pieces on the sea of glue to create a sort of mosaic pattern with tiny gaps.  This process was repeated until the entire bottle was covered.  Once dry, I painted over the entire surface and then antiqued it using acrylic paints and glazes.

Then, I drilled a hole in the original screw-on lid and covered it in polymer clay (sans the hole) and baked it hard.  To create the fuse, I strung beads and pulled the strand through the hole, securing it from the inside by tying a knot around a bead inside the lid.  The label was made on my computer, printed onto ivory paper and the front side rubbed with a candle.  This gave it a protective coat and made it appear old.  The complete text says: 

Potentially Explosive!
Do not use around small children, farm animals, empty fields, shoes, acorns, wands, fires, cheese, owls, gold, silver, copper, glass, ceramics, iron, alcohol, toothpaste, certain species of rainforest toads, toenail clippings, or blood.
Purchaser takes this into custody at his or her own risk.
Have a pleasant day!

Skiving Snackboxes

 

My family loves the idea of the Skiving Snackboxes created by the Weasley twins in the Harry Potter books.  So I set out to create muggle versions of the treats within.  Since I am a muggle and incapable of creating the magic effects of the candies, I instead created "taste effects" by pairing some unusual flavors in these two-part confections.  To find out how I made these, visit the the directions I posted on Instructables for each.

Fever Fudge (upper left) -- spicy hot / vanilla

Puking Pastilles (upper right) -- garlic and anise / mint

Fainting Fancies (lower left) -- carrot and cumin (unsweetened) / sour lemon

Nosebleed Nougat (lower right) -- tart strawberry and balsamic / banana