A Harry Potter Birthday - Wand Tutorial

My son is celebrating hitting double digits and turning 10 years old by having a Harry Potter theme birthday party. He's watched the movies over the years, and recently began reading the books. Over the last 6 months, or so, he's read the first 4 books and is currently about 1/2 way through book 5. He got the box set of all the movies for Christmas. And he's really become quite obsessed with Harry Potter.
We normally have a theme for his birthdays, even if it's just for the cake design and treats. This year, not to our surprise at all, he chose Harry Potter for his theme. One of the things we decided to do for his party was make wands for the kids. Thanks to a tutorial passed along from a friend, found HERE, and another tutorial, found HERE, we were on our way to magical wand madness!

Here is a how we melded the two tutorials, along with our own ideas, and ended up with 8 wands for the big day.

Materials:
Sticks
Hot Glue
Beads
Paint

The sticks we found were from the beach, so they were already clean and smooth (unlike the sticks we originally gathered from our yard). My husband cut them to size and sanded one end on each down to a bit of a wand-like point.
Using the hot glue gun, we applied glue to the sticks, in a random fashion, to give them each a unique, knotty look. We made some with glue only. Others we put glue on and then applied assorted size beads for more texture. Even though I wanted perfection in the bead placement, I had to be reminded that perfection was not necessary since we'd be painting OVER the beads and glue. Ultimately, I left my husband to design the glue and bead designs.
Once they were all dry, I took over for the painting process. I used basic acrylic paints from the craft store in different shades of brown, from light to dark, to finish the wands off.

Here is a photo tutorial:

 

And there you have it!

Thanks for reading!