How to Make a Homemade Harry Potter Wand

Can you tell which of the four wands are real and which ones are fake?

Sheet of printer paper: $0.01
Bottle of Elmer's glue: $2.50
Pack of glue sticks for hot glue gun: $2.50
Acrylic craft paint: $1.20

Giving your kid a wand to swish and flick and stupefy friends with, without having to worry about them losing or breaking their $30 Harry Potter wand:  Priceless.

After our visit to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, both 3Po and Jammy decided they wanted to be Hogwarts students for Halloween (surprise, surprise...).  I'm all for it, but I'll be darned if I let them take the wands they got at Ollivanders -- which are clearly marked "Collectible Wand.  Not a Toy" -- to school on Halloween morning, or around the neighborhood while trick-or-treating.  I've seen what kids can do to wands, and I'm not about to spend $30 to replace them!

So I did an online search, and found instructions on how to make a wand from a sheet of paper and glue gun glue.  They are ridiculously easy to make, and the end result is amazing.  They look like they could be real wands!  When Alfie saw the wands we made, he actually thought I had bought more wands. They are much more lightweight than the real wands, and since they're basically papier-mache, one good whack on a table or wall will probably bend them beyond recognition.  But that's the beauty of these wands: you can always make another one.

I won't go through steps we went through because you can find step-by-step instructions here.  I just want to brag about how they turned out.

This is Jammy's wand: 12 inches, walnut, hippogriff hair.  

To make the handle slightly thicker than the wand, I wrapped extra paper around one end.  I used a glue gun to make raised swirls on the handle, and painted them with bronze metallic craft paint (I prefer the duller sheen of bronze to the bright, glittery gold).

To give the wand an interesting texture, I wrapped a sheet of tissue paper around the wand to form the top layer before painting.

This is The Pea's wand: 13.5 inches, ash, mermaid hair.

To make the thicker handle, I used a hot glue gun to cover one end of the wand, letting the hot glue run down the handle the way wax runs down a candle.  I used lots and lots and lots of glue, letting the inner layers partially dry before adding more.

3Po is still working on his wand, and I want to make a couple more for Alfie and myself, so I'll have more photos to post soon.  I'm so pleased with how these wands turned out, and my kids can't wait to show them off on Halloween.  Talk about magical!