Go, Fight, Gryffindor!

It is no secret that I am a bit of a Harry Potter nerd. So when my (at the time) 11 year old brother-in-law (and all around, most amazing kid I know), started reading the series... it brought proud little tears of joy to my eye. Ok... maybe that's an exaggeration... I didn't cry... but I was super happy. Every time I saw him we'd discuss what book/chapter he was on, and when he'd tell me, I'd look at him all knowing like and say... "oooh just wait... there is some really good stuff coming up soon!" (as if there is any part of the Harry Potter book that is not "really good stuff").

Noah (my bro-in-law fo' life) is also a pretty imaginative kid, so when we decided to make this present we wanted to go all out and give him tons of stuff to interact with. So this is the story... all about how (this is where the fresh-prince sing along stops), we made a Gryffindor writing box, complete with homemade quills, DIY coffee-stained rolls of parchment, and even a version of the Maurauder's map!

 

The box was just an unstained box that we got from the wood section at the craft store Before staining, Zach drew the Gryffindor flag on there the way he wanted and then used our wood burner to put it on the box, he did the outlines of the red and yellow flag, as well as all of the letters this way. 

We then stained the entire box. Then with Acrylic red & gold paint we painted the Gryffindor emblem. Fairly straight-forward and simple.... the inside was a bit more complicated.

For the top of the lid and the bottom of the compartment, we used felt paper (not sure if it's called paper?), but these can be bought at just about any craft store... the top was a brown textured piece that we liked, the bottom is cut out patches of red & gold. It took us awhile to figure this inside part out and get the felt cut to the correct (& precise) dimensions, but after we did, we just glued everything in. I think that some of these felt pieces can be purchased with an adhesive backing... which would make this even easier.

Here is the box without all of the stuff, so you can see how we arranged the felt.

Then we obviously thought it would be super-magical to attach a mirror to the lid.. so we also just glued that in place. While we were making this present we had to split the projects up, Zach pretty much did everything for the box on his own, he may have asked for my input now and again, but he did all of the felt-cutting, wood-burning and staining, etc. Ain't he something special, my hubby? 

I was in charge of the contents of the box. I knew I wanted rolls of parchment, some quills, and after seeing/ downloading this homemade Maurauder's map, I decided to include those as well. 

The rolls of parchment were probably one of the first things I made... I had some leftover paper (nice slightly textured drawing or painting paper), it was in about an 18 x 24 sheet. I cut this down into 2 or 3 various sizes of parchment. Then I brewed some coffee. 

This was not coffee to drink (though I suppose you could). I poured the coffee into a large rectangular tupper-ware container. Then one by one I put the cut pieces of paper in there and let them soak. The darker your coffee brew, and the longer the soaking time will all effect the end results, so if you ever do this, it's worth it to experiments. You can also drop ink on the paper before you put it in the coffee-stain, for a bit of a messy/blotted look.If the paper is thick/strong enough you can even crumple it up while it's wet to creat a bit of texture. You can see one in the photo above that I did this to. 

After you take the paper out of the stain lay it flat on a counter top... or drying rack... and let it dry. You can use paper towels to soak up some excess moisture... but I wouldn't let it dry on them.. they might end up stick together. You could probably leave them to dry on top of dish towels without any issues.

After the paper was dry... I burned some of the edges (for extra magical effect), then I just rolled them up and loosely tied them with some twine.

Then I decided to make my own quills. I don't really care to give a tutorial on this... because, while I think that my quills looks ok.. I don't think they work in the way that a quill actually should. Ideally a feather quill holds in some excess ink for you while you write... my quills... well they just left you with ink-y fingers. However, they were good enough for an 11 year old boy!

Basically I attached some old writing nibs that I had lying around (don't ask me why these were lying around... you accumulate weird things in art school), to the end of the feathers with glue, and then I used strips of the coffee- stained paper and wrapped & glued those around the base of the feathers and over the glued ends of the nibs for some extra stability.

For the Maurauder's map, I can't even really explain what I did. I download the map that I linked to above, but I opened it in photoshop and made my map a bit bigger, and I made more rooms in the castle , and added more characters from the books. I did stick to the basic folding instructions from the original link, but they had to be modified a bit since I extended the paper size. Anyway... after all of the modifications I made on the computer, then I printed out the map on a piece of coffee stained paper, cut to my appropriate map size, and after much trial and error, I finally got it folded just right!

Here are the pages front and back of my map that I updated... I checked the size in photo-shop and I believe I printed these on 8.5 x 15 in pieces of paper:

This was the front of my map.

Back of my map. 

The original download of the map didn't have a backside... but I am such a nerd... that I HAD to add more rooms. I mean... can you really make a map of Hogwarts and not even have the dormitories for each of the four houses?  Also... a castle needed to have more than one story... so my back side includes a second and third floor of the castle. Which made it more legit... because then I could add Moaning Myrtle's bathroom on the third-floor corridor! Yeah... I have issues. I could have gone on creating the whole castle forever, if my deadline for this project wasn't Christmas. 

I can't figure out how to make these a download for you guys... so if you want to make the map, just contact me and I can send you a full size document so you can print your own!

Then we just threw everything in the box ( along with a bottle of ink), and VOILA! The absolute coolest Christmas present I have ever made!

Complete with Luna (as in Luna Lovegood) in the background. Seriously... I have a Harry Potter obsession... 

Anybody want to hire us to make them a box? We've thought about making them for all four houses... just for fun...