Harry Potter Party - Halloween Crafts

My son wanted a Harry Potter party this year and since it was his year for a friend party (we only do them every 4 years) I wanted to make sure it was geared toward short attention spans :)!  I scoured the web for ideas, and there are a million, and used Pinterest of course.

 I used the invite idea from Just Sweet and Simple for our invites.  I opened the background page she has for a free download in photoshop and altered it to say my son's name instead of Harry Potter.  I used this for all the backgrounds of my signs.

First up at the party was Olivander's Wand Shop:

I made our wands out of cut dowles and hot glue following the tutorial from Deviant Art.  These were super easy to make and I loved how they turned out.  They were the proudest part of the party for me ;).

We had each of the boys pick a wand out of the box with their eyes closed, grab their school text books and Hogwarts train tickets.  Spell book and Potions book found at Dirt and Sunshine. 

We then head through the 9 3/4 Platform.  This was a craft fail.  I used that corrugated brick banner stuff people use for faux fireplace chimneys at Christmas.  It just curled up on me, the kids didn't notice.  You can kind of see it in the picture above.  I printed the platform sign from here.

Downstairs we did the sorting.  Luckily my neighbor had a sorting hat for us to borrow! Super cool right?  I just printed off house badges and put them in a paper bag to pull out lotto style.  We then pinned the badge onto the boys' shirts. Next up was Defense Against the Dark Arts, where the boys used their spell books to learn how to use their wands.

 After the boys moved onto potions class.  I created this spell book after an idea I saw on Tiff Creative Outlet.  I made the spell pages in photoshop and taped them to a thrift store book.  I painted the edges brown and bent the page corners.  Cute right?

We did the Mandrake Restorative Draught from Dirt and Sunshine - it was a huge hit!  This was the boys' favorite part.  They got to see their potions bubble up and change color twice.  It was really fun.  I printed her bottle lables and potions books too.

After potions the boys played capture the snitch.  We hid a gold Christmas ornament before the party and had the boys run around on their broomsticks looking for it.  Then it was time for Honeydukes:

I made the candy labels in photoshop to look like the ones in the real Honeydukes in Orlando.  I printed the Butterbeer labels from Karen Cookie Jar.

 My mom took a graduation robe we found at the thrift store and shortened it for my son.  She also crocheted his scarf with this pattern, I know she only did half the width that it called for and it was plenty wide.  He's going to be Harry Potter for Halloween too and we got him a gryffindor tie for his birthday.

Overall I think it was a success.  The kids all had fun and my son was super happy.

Here's the candy labels if you want them.