Hand-Made Harry Potter Invites

Hogwarts Party Invitations
Tea Stained Paper
Calligraphy Pen with Brown Ink
Handmade Hogwarts Stamp
Rolled into a Scroll and Tied with Twine

For my son's party invitations, I wanted to make it so that it would look like something that might actually be sent from Hogwarts. Rather than a folded letter and wax seal (since my sealing wax and imprints are off in storage somewhere) I decided to go with a scroll.

I wanted to approximate the look and feel of old parchment that has been sitting in a wizard's workshop for ages, so I took plain copy paper, cut it in half, and then soaked it in a baking pan filled with strong spice flavored tea. I actually really liked the scent that the spice tea added... sort of like something that would go into a potion. And the tea soak also gave the paper a different, almost crispy feel. However, the tea alone only gave it a pale color, so I added about 3 cups of strong coffee to the tea bath. I think that contributed to the variation of color on each page. Each page looks slightly different which works with the wizard-made feel.

This is the one page that I left whole. I like the way it looks two toned, but I haven't used this one yet. When the pages looked good, I took them out of the tea/coffee bath and laid them out on the deck, in the sun. I've been looking for a photo, but I guess I either forgot to take one, or I deleted it for some reason. Oh well. It's a simple process. Soak paper. Lay out flat to dry.  I could have just used the paper as the background and photocopied one letter.... but I liked the individual aspect of handwriting each letter.

Rather than a quill, I used a calligraphy pen with brown ink. It turns out the Hogwarts letters are actually in green ink, but as this is an invitation, I thought brown would do. I did not worry abut using perfect calligraphy. I'm a busy wizard, with spells to cast and potions to mix.  I got the idea for the wording from this site, and I wrote out the Hogwarts Heading, using my personal stamp to make it official.

I rolled up my invitations and tied them with cotton twine. For a little while I was toying with the idea of dipping the ends of the twine in gold paint, but I decided I liked the plain scrolls.

I found this invitation with owl and accessories on pinterest and thought it would be really cool to deliver these scrolls with an owl, but to be honest, I have to draw the line somewhere. I'm making owls to give away during the party and I need those extra few weeks on that project. And of course there's the idea of attaching the invites to white helium balloons that have owls drawn on them... but I was okay with just having G's stuffed owl supervise the delivery.

Let's just say that although I didn't deliver all the invites personally, I think the recipients were pretty delighted to get them, just the way they were.

Stay tuned for more Harry Potter Party crafts. The things you can do are almost endless and it is super hard to limit the tasks you set for yourself... if you are hosting a HP party.