#TBCCrafters Thrilling Thursday Craft - How to make a Wizards Wand

Check it Out!  Halloween is right around the corner and if your looking for a cool wand to add to a Wizard's costume, we have just the craft for you today!  

My daughter is a huge fan of Harry Potter and Merlin and had a few store bought wands before the fire, but wasn't really interested in buying those types again, they just didn't look real enough for her, so we decided to make our own.  

Here is how we did it:

Supplies:

• Wood dowels or chopsticks
• Hot glue and plenty of glue sticks
• Beads
• Paint

Since this craft uses hot glue, I recommend adult supervision as it is easy to get burned by the dripping glue.  And it does take quite a lot of hot glue, we used about 3-4 sticks per wand, of course it depends on the details and how much you layer it.

If your using a craft dowel and want a pointed end, just shave it down with a craft knife to get a point, kinda like sharpening a pencil.  We made one of each, one with a pointed end and one with a blunt end.

We used a large plastic bead on the end to create the rounded part, so the first step is to cover the tip of the dowel with hot glue and then add the bead.  Allow it to dry and then start adding more hot glue.  By adding a big glob and then letting it run down the sides, it creates a lava flow like effect and by twisting, turning and flipping the dowel you can make the glue drip in different ways and patterns.

We used a ring of pony beads around the center part to create the ring look, again, just adding the beads and then allowing them to dry before adding more dollops of glue.  You can build these spots up as much as you want to get the look you want.  The secret however is to allow the glue to dry between layers, this keeps the layers from moving around and by using the tip of your hot glue gun on areas of dried glue, can create even more effects.  It was really all an experiment for us, but it worked out great!  We then created another ring around the pointed end with smaller beads.  The last two pictures in the collage above show the completed wand with all of the glue on and dried.

To make the wands look more like metal, we painted one of our wands grey and then antiqued over it with black, like the one above.  Just lay down your first coat and then add your other color a little at a time, wiping off to let the grey beneath show through a little.

For the one below, we created a wood look by using brown as the base coat and white to antique it.  Victoria did this part and it came out so amazing.  Really looks like wood.  To finish of the blunt ended one, we added a crystal bead to the tip.