Hermione's Beaded Handbag

I made this little ornament for Audania1 in the HP Holiday Ornament & Stocking Stuffer Swap.  The very last HP Swap to be hosted here on Craftster!   :'(  But don't worry, I'm sure I'll host a lovely new HP Swap in our new home, as soon as we have one to settle into.  ;)

I knew when I started the swap that I wanted to come up with an object or scene from the books that I hadn't seen done as an ornament before.  It took me a few days of pondering, but I suddenly remembered Hermione's bag of holding pretty little beaded handbag that also served as a mobile library while hunting Horcruxes and on the run from Death Eaters.  It is crocheted from 2 yarns held together, Caron Simply Soft in plum, and Lion Brand BonBons in purple sparkle.  I didn't use a pattern, just winged it based on the many other bags I've done in the past.  I believe I started with 6 sc, and expanded up to 24 in your average crochet circle, then the sides were done in hdc, because sc was proving too stiff for the shape of the bag I wanted.  I just hooked until I liked the height to the point of a drawstring, then did a row of hdc, ch 1, sk 1 st, all the way around, then finished with a round of hdc and a final row of sc.  I crocheted the drawstring and made the tassel out of the BonBons sparkle, then I dug through my embroidery thread stash, and bead stash, to find stuff to embellish the little bag with.

I hid a second ornament inside: Slytherin's Locket!

Ravenclaw Scarf Ornament - With Pattern

I recently had the pleasure of swapping with lindyv321 in the Harry Potter Holiday swap.  She's a Ravenclaw, and I decided to create a tiny Ravenclaw House scarf for her.  I looked around for patterns, but didn't like the sizes of the ones I could find, or I didn't have the right sized yarn, so I just made up my own based on what I had on hand.  I've included the pattern below in case anyone else wants to make one for themselves.

Ravenclaw House Scarf Ornament

You will need:
Sport Weight cotton yarn in your choice of colors (I used Omega Sinfonia)
3.25 mm crochet hook
needle to weave in yarn ends

Row 1: With Blue, chain 7, sc in 2nd ch from hook. Sc in next 5 across. (6 sc)
Row 2-4: hdc across (6 hdc)
Row 5: Change to bronze, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 6: Change to blue, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 7: Change to bronze, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 8-41: Change to blue, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 42: Change to bronze, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 43: Change to blue, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 44: Change to bronze, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 45-47: Change to blue, hdc across (6 hdc).
Row 48: sc across ( 6sc).

Finish off, weave in ends.

Fold scarf around, and make 2 tacking stitches with some spare blue yarn, to keep it in a folded shape. Cut 2 strands of yarn 14” long, and string them through the top of the ornament. Tie a knot, then slip on a glass pony bead, and tie a second knot. Leave a gap for a hook, then tie another knot, add a second bead, and tie a final knot before trimming off the extra yarn.

***Note: For my scarf ornament, I used the sport weight yarn for the blue body of the scarf, but for the contrasting bronze stripes I used 2 strands of Lion Brand Bonbons sparkle, held together.  In my case I used brown & copper to get my bronze color.  The Bonbons are a very fine/light weight yarn that was much thinner than the sport weight, but was just about equal when using 2 strands at once.

Harry Potter Paper Bunting & Ornaments

Another year, another round of the Harry Potter Holiday Swap!  This year I had 3 partners, and created a wider mix of items than I have in previous years, including a banner, wooden ornaments, glitter ornaments, and potions bottles.  I'm going to post the holiday themed items here, and the potions bottles tomorrow.

My friend Edel requested some sort of banner or garland, so I created one out of book pages from an old copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  The 3 part design was bought from the Silhouette store online, and the paper pieces were all cut on my Silhouette, before being assembled with twine & sparkle yarn, as well as some large hole glass beads between each snowflake.  There are 20 snowflakes all together on the strand, and I included a few extra of the cut pages and backing, without the light blue snowflake on them.  Each snowflake & frame is about 4" across, and the whole thing is a few yards long. 

I knew I wanted to make an Amortentia ornament for Kira, but was nervous about doing a new technique and possibly messing up her ornament, so I did a practice Felix Felicias one first.  I created these from a tutorial online that utilized alcohol inks, which I happened to have on hand.  The words were cut out on my Silhouette Cameo, and the tops were decorated with a chain maile collar of rings, and charms in corresponding colors, with shamrocks and celtic knots for the liquid luck potion, and hearts for the Amortentia love potion.

The last set of ornaments almost didn't happen.  I bought the wooden blanks on clearance after Christmas last year at Joann's.  They are laser cut wood ornament that come flat, and have slots to slide them together to create the 3-D hearts.  Being a Harry Potter nut, the first thing I thought when I saw the stags standing above hearts was 'OMG, look at the Patronus ornaments!' 

So I picked them up for less than $1 each, and put them away in my wood crafting stash to await this year's holiday crafting.  ...And completely forgot about them.  I bumped into them by accident when I went to pull out popsicle sticks to use in a recent candle making adventure, and knew I had to put them together. 

They are colored with Tim Holtz distress crayons, which have the feel of oil pastels, but unlike pastels, they don't smear all over the place.  You can smudge them if you do so on purpose, but on their own they don't smudge.  I colored them lightly with the crayons, then used wet Q-tips to blend the crayons into a watercolor effect.  I actually made 4, but somehow only have pictures of 3.

Have a Very Harry Christmas!

I've been keeping some of my newest projects a secret for a few weeks now.  At first it was because I didn't have all the pieces assembled yet, and later it was because I didn't want to get groans from the "It's too early for Christmas!" crowd.  But now that crafting is my full time job, I find that I'm crafting earlier and earlier for the holidays, both to fill my shop, and for my gifts for friends and family.

Harry Potter's Wand with deep red velvet ribbon.

It all started a few months ago, when I ordered some wand pendants to use in my jewelry crafting.  I had grand ideas about placing them on charm holders along with other beads and charms to represent each of those characters.  Then the "pendants" arrived, and I realized that I hadn't checked the size descriptions carefully enough.  Each wand was 4" long!  Far too big to be worn around the neck.  They sat around on my desk for a few days until I had a brain wave.  Christmas ornaments!

Hermione Granger's Wand with iridescent red & violet ribbon.

I added beautiful velvet and satin ribbons to correspond to each character's personality and am thrilled with how they came out.  Since I knew someone would ask, I've listed each one separately, as well as bundled together as a set if you're like me, and must have all four.  Seriously, someday I'm going to have a completely Harry Potter themed Christmas tree, separate from my regular tree.  Maybe it will live in my craft room to keep me cheerful during the stress of the holidays....

Dumbledore's Wand, otherwise known as the Elder Wand, with purple satin ribbon.

Voldemorte's Wand with emerald green velvet ribbon.

After finishing the wand ornaments, I started work on another set.  Horcruxes!  So far I have Ravenclaw's Diadem and Hufflepuff's Cup finished and listed in the shop.  I'm currently working on adding the other 5 Horcruxes, which will probably show up one at a time over the next few weeks.

Ravenclaw's Diadem, on royal blue glittered velvet ribbon.

Hufflepuff's Cup, on dark grey glittered velvet ribbon.

I actually posted these over on Craftster on Tuesday, before I got a chance to sit down and write a blog post.  In the mean time, they were made a Featured Project there!