Harry Potter Film Locations - Platform 9 3/4s

Where else to start than Platform 9 3/4s. In the first book, Harry is told he has to run through the brick wall between platforms 9 and 10 in order to emerge at the platform where the train to Hogwarts will depart. King's Cross Station have installed their own monument to this part of the story in the form of a Platform sign and half a trolley emerging from the wall. It is in the main part of the station so you can take a picture or two and pretend for a minute that you are starting your journey to the magical castle. 

Since I visited last year, they have also added a trunk and cage on the trolley!

BUT

Beware of queues!

Love Rebecca

Harry Potter Film Locations Guide

Over the past few years, my parents and I have been travelling to places in the UK that were used for filming the Harry Potter films. Not only was it fun to see some of the filming locations, but we also thoroughly enjoyed visiting some beautiful parts of the country.

I know that I am not the only Harry Potter fan out there so I thought I would share some pictures, opinions and tips about the locations we have visited so far. Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing photos of places such as Gloucester Cathedral, Alnwick Castle and King's Cross Station.

Gloucester Cathedral

So why not join me on a Friday to explore the magical side of England.

Love Rebecca

Capturing Moments of Pure Joy

I love photos, especially photos of all the family and for the past 5 years or so, whenever I have been on holiday with my parents, I have insisted on trying to take a photo of all of us. So on Spanish beaches, Scottish castles and Italian Verandas, we have set up the camera on the tripod, posed and caught all of us in whatever location we may be. And I love these photos, we are all present and smiling, set against a beautiful backdrop. Of course they are usually amusing to take, setting up the tripod wherever possible and then running to get into position in the 10 seconds afforded to you by the camera. These proved particularly problematic when we attempted to take a picture on a Spanish beach. I had it into my head that I wanted the three of us on the sand with nothing but sea behind us. However, in order to have some height, the camera needed to be set up on the promenade above, about 6 ft above the sand. I had to set the camera off, run across the promenade, down the slope and then back across the sand to where my parents were waiting, in 10 seconds. I was not fast enough and by the time I got in position, the resulting photograph looked something like this...

So my Dad was tasked with the job and we got a calmer picture like this.

And I love it, but you know, part of me loves the first one more - the one where I am grinning like a Cheshire cat, sunglasses still in place, barely in position and my parents are quite clearly laughing at my antics. I love that picture because it captures a moment of fun. 

Last week, my parents and I visited Alnwick Castle. It was used in the first two Harry Potter films and is a fantastic place to visit. Just before we were about to leave my Dad set up his camera to take a picture of the three of us. Whilst he was doing this my Mum and I were in the gift shop where I was buying myself a broomstick. Yes a broomstick - at £2.50 even the 'grown-up' side of me could not resist and I came out of the shop holding my broom as happy as a first year Hogwarts student about to take up flying lessons.

So when we posed for the photo, of course the broom came in the shot and the three of us could not stop laughing at the thought of three grown adults, posing for a picture whilst holding a broomstick of all things. So by the time the thirty seconds has elapsed (Dad's camera is fancier than mine) my Mum and I were still in fits of giggles and my Dad was trying in vain to warn us that the picture was about to be taken. And the result is literally my favourite picture of the three of us. Ever. I have several photos of the three of us in several locations that are great photos. But none manage to capture the moment of happiness like this one. In the moment that the camera went off we were happy, laughing at the thought of the broomstick in our hands after enjoying a thoroughly enjoyable few days in each others company - and that was all captured in this picture, which I will be framing to go in my new apartment! 

Love Rebecca

Storybook Craft Project - Harry Potter Headbands

If you have been reading my blog for a while you may have realised that I am a bit of a Harry Potter fanatic (in a good way of course). I am a huge fan of the books and the films...I am super excited because my parents bought the complete Harry Potter books for Kindle for my birthday so I get to reread all of the books! Mega happy times. On the blog I have featured my Harry Potter baking efforts before and today I will be sharing some Harry Potter headgear. These are similar to my simple headbands I featured back in August.

(the headbands are kindly modelled by my fantabulous housemates Jess and Holly)

I made my Gryffindor headband to wear when I visited the Warner Brother's Studios - Making of Harry Potter. Its a simple headband and looks really effective - definitely a more subtle way to show your HP allegiance.

So choose your house and join me to make a Harry Potter headband

Materials
1/2 fat quarter of each colour
Gryffindor - Maroon and gold
Slytherin - Green and silver
Hufflepuff - Yellow and black
Ravenclaw - Blue and bronze
4-5 inches of elastic


1. Cut 3 strips of 16 1/2" x 1 1/2" of each colour. Pin two contrasting strips right sides together and sew down the long length. Repeat with other two pairs. Now pin and sew these three pairs of strips together - yours will look like the picture but with two extra stripes.

2. Press the seams. Cut the striped block into 4 inch blocks as in the picture. Line these up as in the picture so that you get the alternation of colours all the way along. Sew these blocks together.

3. Press the seams. Iron the whole strip in half lengthwise and then open up and bring each edge piece into the centre line. Fold in half, trapping the raw edges inside ( I have tried to capture this in the picture below)

4. Pin together, folding in the short ends to hide the raw edges, and sew all the way down the long length

5. Measure round your head and work out how much elastic you will need to make it fit the headband to your head. Cut your elastic half an inch bigger than this. Tuck in to the end (about 1/4" in) and sew. Repeat at the other side.

 Here is me wearing my headband in front of the entrance to Dumbledore's office at the Making of Harry Potter (PS. If you are ever in the vicinity and are wondering if it is worth a visit...IT IS!)

Join me next week for another Storybook Craft Project!

Have a great weekend!

Love Rebecca

Harry Potter Snitch Shirt - Storybook Craft Project Guest Post from Rae Gun Ramblings

I am so excited to be welcoming Marissa to Heron's Crafts this week to share with you her amazing Harry Potter shirt! I love Rae Gun Ramblings and Marissa definitely shares my love of all things bookish! Don't forget to head over and check some of her other fantastic projects! Without further ado...I will hand over to Marissa!

I'm Marissa from  Rae Gun Ramblings and I am so trilled to be guest posting for this week's StoryBook Crafts. Like Rebecca I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I've done so many Potter related blog posts that in addition to my bookish tag on my blog I have one devoted to Harry Potter related posts.

I also have a slight weakness for fan related shirts. I may have over 10 Potter shirts alone. So today I want to share with you how to make a fun Snitch shirt.

What You Need

• Fabric paint (I used both metallic gold and gold glitter)
• Foam brush
• Freezer Paper (it's like wax paper but only has the coating on one side)
• Paper cutting machine or Exacto Knife

Make your stencil. I cut my stencils out on my cricut but you can just print your design and and then cut it out of the freezer paper with an exacto knife. You'll want the shinny side to face down.

Iron your stencil (shinny side down) onto your shirt. Make sure to take your time and check that all the edges are sealed. For the snitch I just used it as a basic stencil but for the lettering I did a reverse stencil and put the cut out letters down and then painted on top of them so the lettering was the color of the shirt.

Put something in between the layers of the shirt. I just use a pieces of freezer paper shinny side up.

 
Start painting. I find that with this technique it is much better to blot and avoid brushing since you don't want to accidentally pull up the stencil. For mine I used the metallic paint first then did the glitter paint.

Allow to dry for about 1 hour.

Pull off paper. The paint will still be tacky so be careful when removing the paper. I like to use s straight pin to hold down the shirt while I pull off the stencil.

Allow to dry completely and you're done.

I hope you try it out. It's SO much fun. Feel free to visit my blog to get a printable of the snitch that you can use to make your stencil. If this went a bit fast for you feel free to check out my Freezer Paper Tutorial that has a bit more thorough instructions and lots more pictures. And definitely let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for having me. I'd love you to swing by Rae Gun Ramblings. and say hi!

Storybook Craft Project - Harry Potter Gingerbread

Don't you just love Harry Potter? I am definitely part of the Harry Potter generation! I was read the first three books as bed time stories. Saw the first two films on school trips in the last two years of primary school. Held out hope that my letter from Hogwarts would arrive before I started at Secondary School. Went to the midnight event to get the Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince book. And I totally cried at the end of the last book when I realised it was all over.

But now I have all 8 films on DVD, am tempted to reread the books and have visited the Warner Brothers Studios - Harry Potter, London.

This is the latest of my Harry Potter baking efforts which was embarked on one Sunday afternoon by my housemate Holly and myself. 

Holly is allergic to egg so we used this recipe from the Art of Dessert for the gingerbread and royal icing,

We simply added food colouring to the icing to get the Hogwarts Express red or the Ford Anglia black.

You will need...

2 batches of Gingerbread

1 Batch of Royal Icing

Chocolate buttons/Dolly Mixture/Writing Icing

Hogwarts Castle

The castle is really simple....

Once you have your three building pieces, use royal icing to stick the towers to the side of the building.

To decorate...

Buttons make great windows

Broken buttons make good roof tiles

Dolly Mixture make good door handles and roof borders

Don't forget Hedwig!

The Hogwart's Express

Once you have your pieces baked...

To Assemble

Use Royal Icing to glue two rectangles to surface. Make sure they are close enough so that the third can comfortably sit on top. Use royal icing to attach. We hid a beaker inside ours to help it stand up.

Use icing to stick circle on front and square over back - we needed some little dolly mixture pieces to get ours to the right height.

Sandwich you chimney pieces together with royal icing and use dolly mixture to stand it up on the roof

To Decorate...

Red Icing to cover sides

Use Writing icing to write the 9 3/4 sign

Use dolly mixture to add detail to the front of the train

The Characters

You need gingerbread man cutters in assorted sizes...

smallest = house elf

smallish = pupil

larger = teacher

largest = Hagrid!

Use icing and decorations to add defining features to your favourite characters

here are some ideas...

Ron - 'R' Jumper

Hermione - Crookshanks, Books

Harry - glasses, scar, broomstick

Dumbledore - wizards hat, beard

Snape - Long hair

Hagrid - Big beard

 Get creative and populate your Hogwarts with your favourite characters!

And just for fun...we added a Ford Anglia

Blue and white royal icing

Dolly mixture lights!

If you could make some Harry Potter gingerbread what would you make? Which characters would you make?

Join me next week for another Storybook Craft Project

Have a great weekend

Love Rebecca

Linking up to a selection of these great Link Parties

Warner Brothers Studios - The Making of Harry Potter

On Friday I finally got down to Leavesden to visit the Making of Harry Potter at the Warner Brothers Studios! I went with my parents and we all agreed it was a FANTASTIC day! I would wholeheartedly recommend a visit to any Harry Potter Fan!

Entrance to Dumbledore's Office

Following a short movie introduction from Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint we were shown into the Great Hall itself. From here, the tour is self guided and you can see the sets for the Burrow, the Gryffindor common room, Dumbledore's office and so many more! 

As well as sets, costumes are on display and there are videos throughout explaining more about the processes involved in things such as Quidditch and animal actor training!

Hagrid's Hut

After we had looked round the many many sets, props and costumes on display in the first building, we headed out into a courtyard area featuring Privet Drive, the Knight Bus and the Bridge that features at Hogwarts from the third film onwards. 

Hogwarts Bridge 

Of course this is where you can buy your very own cup of ButterBeer! And I must say that I really enjoyed it although I am at a complete loss at how to describe the flavour to you - kind of fizzy and sweet and not so all at the same time! Here is mine in my souvenir cup (probably the cheapest souvenir you could get!)

The second building houses Diagon Alley in all its glory - we spotted Ollivanders, Madam Malkins and of course, Weasley's Wizards Weezes!

And the finale...the scale model of Hogwarts that is used for the aerial and general building shots in the movie! This is really so impressive and amazing to walk around - possibly one of my favourite bits!

And there you have it...a Grand Day Out! 

So what are you waiting for...visit and experience the magic for yourself!

P.S. Did you notice the Gryffindor headband I am sporting? I will be posting on how you can make your own Hogwarts headband in due course.

(because there was no way I could afford anything in that gift shop  -£8 for a chocolate frog - really!?)

P.P.S. I also REALLY want to download the Complete Set of Harry Potter books to my Kindle and read them all over again and I am well up for the challenge of watching all 8 movies consecutively (yes that would take me 22 hours) - I just need to find someone as keen as me to help me stay awake!

Love Rebecca

Jacket Cushion Tutorial

School blazer cushion, Glee Warbler, Harry Potter

Old School Blazer and Tie

My first ever post on this blog featured my Glee Warbler Cushion. I have since used the same process to make a Harry Potter cushion and a cushion using my old school blazer. It had been hanging in my wardrobe for three years, I was refusing to throw it out but had nothing to do with it! Now I have a cute keepsake!
I have developed a tutorial for turning a jacket into a cushion (There are a lot of photos but hopefully that'll make things easier!).  Since making the original Glee cushion I have adapted the tutorial to make the back of the cushion from the back of the jacket (so the the Glee cushion still has a cream fabric backing). The cushion is made using both the front and the back of the jacket, as well as the tie. The only extra fabric needed is some white to act as the shirt.

Materials
1 Jacket/Blazer (with or without badge)
1 Tie
White Fabric
1 Cushion Inner (size depends on size of jacket)
Coordinating cotton

Full tutorial after the jump

Harry Potter Baking Round-up

3 months later and we finished our Harry Potter marathon! Here is a round up of all the Harry Potter treats I made...just click the link under each picture to see the recipe!

Cauldron Cakes

Butterbeer Muffins

Snitch Cakes Pops

Pumpkin Pasties

Rock Cakes

Character sugar cookies

Snitch Cake

Love Rebecca



Linking to...

The Grant Life
Naptime Crafters
Family Ever After 
Positively Splendid
Tatertots and Jello
Mrs Fox's Sweets