Harry Potter Guess Who

I've been meaning to write this post for over a year.  (This project was completed December 2012).  However, better late than never!

I was inspired for the project by the fabulous Doctor Who Guess Who game made by Karen Kavett.  I made my own version of the Doctor Who game by printing the cards Karen posted and painting a Guess Who game I found at Goodwill.

While I was in the middle of this project though I began to think how great a Harry Potter version of Guess Who would be!  And thus a new project was born:

Harry Potter Guess Who : Good vs. Evil Edition

I chose to make this Harry Potter game with a more recent version of the Guess Who game board than was used for the Doctor Who version, mostly because it was an easier version to find at a Goodwill (my go-to stop when beginning a new project!)

The next step was choosing what characters to include and design the inserts with their pictures.

There are way too many characters to choose from!!

Guess Who has 24 slots, and I had a terrible time narrowing it down to that many!  So I decided to make 2 game boards - one with all the "good guys" and one with the "baddies".  Granted, some characters proved tricky - like Filch and Snape.  Filch wasn't particularly evil but he was never very nice, so he ended up over there on evil anyway.  And even though Snape played the part of a bad guy for most of the books, his tragic redemption at the end just necessitated his inclusion of the good side.  

        

Fronts and Backs of Character Inserts

I designed all the inserts for the game boards to have the character's house colors as the background.  If they didn't go to Hogwarts, or their house is unknown, the background is just white (good) or black (evil).  And yes, there is one extra evil character.  There was an empty space on the print out, so room for a bonus character.  You get to choose which ones to include!

The Mystery Cards (the ones you draw from at the beginning of the game), are either white or black.  

       

And of course, I painted the game boards to match.

Finally, it was time to design the box.  This was a bit of a challenge to get the feel I wanted, include the information I needed, and to get it all to fit on a smaller square box.  A few versions later, I came up with this:

The sides of the boxes feature the four main colors of the four Hogwarts houses, and four important characters - Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort.

So there it is!  

Downloads of all the cards and the box design coming soon!  (Computer can't handle another minute currently!)

Harry Potter Party

In March of 2012, my roommate and I decided to have a Harry Potter party.  Parties for us are basically an excuse to decorate in a theme and make all sorts of food that matches.  Harry Potter, both books and movies, is one of our most beloved fandoms, and it lends itself so well to thematic foods!  The hardest part was narrowing it down to a list small enough to actually accomplish.

First up, we selected all of our friends who like Harry Potter (a number, which should be larger than it is, sadly!). We invited everyone via facebook, but I also sent paper invites, which included an invitation in the style of a Hogwarts acceptance letter, and ticket to the Hogwarts express, and a Maurader's Map.

The pdf design and instructions for making the Maurader's Map were found here.

The ticket was found through an image search and the acceptance letter was created by me. (Download included at end).

We folded all of these up and put inside an envelope addressed to our friends at "The Cupboard Under the Stairs", then put those envelope inside slightly larger ones to address with actual addresses and stamps.

After invitations were made and sent, it was time to work on decorations!

First thing we knew we wanted were the famous floating candles of the great hall. I looked into buying battery powered taper candles, but they were far too expensive to order the amount I needed.  I figured we needed at least a dozen, but preferably more to have the right impact.  After some searching, I found a large pack of battery powered tealights at Big Lots for a reasonable price.  To turn these into tapers, I cut some printer paper in half then rolled it tightly around the tealight, taped it, and voila! Taper candles! Then I tied some clear string around the "flame" part of the tealights and pinned the other end of the string into the ceiling at slightly different heights.

To decorate our coffee table, which was going to serve as the food table, we draped it with some remnant fabric we bought at Jo-Ann Fabrics.  One was a sparkly black tulle and the other was a burgundy embroidered piece.

Also, we made Hogwarts banners on black poster board.  One large one was used for the Hogwarts seal, and smaller ones were created for the four houses.  We hung the big one over the TV, and the four others side by side along another wall in the living room.

The big poster board was too floppy, and kept bending closed, but we taped a wooden dowel across the top and that fixed it.

Up next, the most important part - the food!!  Since we were having our party around dinner time, we needed some "real" food, so I made a simple Shepherd's Pie in the crock-pot.  We also bought some chips and spinach-artichoke dip, which we called "Gillyweed Dip".  Then, it was on to the sweets! (Recipes linked, as well as included in a download at the end of this blog post).

We had:
-Cauldron Cakes (Chocolate Cupcakes with chocolate handles)
-Pumpkin Pasties (Recipe here. I opted for pre-made dough though)
-Cockroach Clusters (Recipe from Bakerella!)
-Cauldron Cakes (Lost link to recipe - but it's included in my recipe document)
-Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (Jelly Beans)
-"Grindylow Gummies" (Gummy Sharks)
-Drooble's Best Blowing Gum (Iridescent Gumballs)
-Chocolate Frogs (Chocolate mixed with Rice Krispies poured into a frog candy mold)
-Treacle Tarts (Recipe from Bakingdom)
-Licorice Wands (Red Licorice)
-Lemon Drops
-Fizzing Whizbees (Zots candies)
and of course...
-Butterbeer!

The recipe for butterbeer can be found on tons of websites, and each is slightly different.  We used the recipe from Bakingdom, and everyone loved it - especially the foamy whipped cream on top!  So good!  The beer glasses were purchased at Goodwill - they don't match, which we think adds to the Hog's Head charm.

I made tiny "tent" labels for all the food, so our guests would know what they were eating.  (Download included at end).

And that's it!  Tons of prep and planning, but it was worth it!  Everyone was impressed and we all ate entirely too much candy, but what fun it was!  Hope to do it again someday.

Downloads:

Tent Labels for Harry Potter foods - .zip file of images - print the ones you want! (also includes labels for food we did not buy/make: candyfloss, acid pops, pumpkin juice)

Harry Potter Party Invitations - includes Hogwarts letter, Hogwarts Express ticket, and Hogwarts seals (used for return address and as a seal on envelopes)

Harry Potter Party Recipes - all the recipes we used compiled into one Word document

Finally Doing This Thing!

For quite a while I've wanted to have a blog for the various craft projects I do.  So now, I'm finally making one.  I have some pictures from old projects I'll post about first, and then we'll see what crazy schemes I come up with this summer.  A Doctor Who party is already in the works! :)