Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Golden Snitch Ornaments

My die-hard Harry Potter wouldn't even consider looking further once we found the Golden Snitch ornament idea on Tiny Apartment Crafts found here: http://tinyapartmentcrafts.blogspot.com/2010/12/golden-snitch-ornament-tutorial.html  The wings are a multi-day process with drying time so plan ahead.

Supplies needed:
Crafting wire - I used 20 gauge. I used silver because it's what I had in the gauge I wanted. You can get it in gold.
Sheer white, ivory or gold fabric - I used some white leftover from making window sheers
Fabric or other multi-purpose glue - I used Liquid Stitch
Gold glitter fabric paint
Small gold plastic ornaments - found ours at Target, 24 for $5
Hot glue
Metallic gold paint
Gold paint pen, optional

Cut a 6" piece of wire.  Make the first bend at 2 1/2".  That 2 1/2" length is the top of the wing.   Bend the bottom scalloped edge into the remaining wire, twist the end around and snip off any extra.  I used a combination of round-nose pliers and chain-nose pliers to shape my wings.

Cut small pieces of the fabric, slightly bigger than your wings.  My son used a paintbrush to get the glue onto the wire.  Once the glue is on, attach the fabric and set aside to dry.



Once dry, trim the excess fabric.  I debated trying to fold it over and gluing more but that didn't look good when I tried one.


Paint the wings with gold glitter fabric paint. I debated getting the Soft variety but it was twice as expensive as the standard dimensional paint. The dimensional fabric paint worked just fine. This took a couple days too as we painted each side twice to make sure they were very glittery.

I strayed from the original directions in two ways with the wings... one, I used fabric and not tissue and, two, I used fabric glitter glue instead of straight glitter.  One word for my reason... kids.  The tissue would've been too fragile and the glitter was a wee bit more potential mess then I wanted to risk.

Once the wings are dry, it's time to make the snitches!  I used hot glue and it worked beautifully.  I spread a bead of glue around the coiled end of the wing first, then applied a pea size dollop to the ornament.  Attach and hold... you have to wait for the glue to cool and mostly set.  Fortunately, with low-temp hot glue, that only takes 30 to 40 seconds.  However, if you are making a dozen like we did, that does add up to some time as you hold each little wing individually.  Once the glue was fully cooled and set, my son painted over the hot glue with metallic gold paint.

The optional paint pen is if you would like to take a plain gold ornament and mark it with snitch designs.  Jasper decided he liked the polka dots, stripes and other designs on some of the ornaments in the bundle we got so we didn't do this.

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