When I, a witch, offer you, a muggle, a Christmas present from the Harry Potter universe, the chances are that you, like me, want Hermione’s timeturner.

Tough break I’m afraid, because for day five of my Blogmas of Bookish crafts, I’m not giving you what you want, but what you need with this Harry Potter inspired, easy to make golden snitch and felix felicis DIY. Yes, I’m giving you recreation and good luck, because no one needs to be running around like a headless turkey trying to avoid their past selves during the festive period.

 

To make an easy golden snitch and felix felicis ornament you need:

• • Scissors
  • Craft knife
  • Cutting mat
  • PVA glue
  • Paper
  • Gold foil
  • Silver pens or paint
  • Cocktail stick
  • Cotton wool
  • Tiny glass bottles (affiliate link alert but I used these)
  • Gold wire
  • Gold glitter

How to make a golden snitch and potion step by step

Here I’ll guide you through making the snitch and the felix felicis potion bottle which I join together at the end. Though in this step by step guide I’m starting with the snitch, you can do it in any order. This just allowed me to work on the potion while the snitch wings dried.

1. Make your snitch wings- this is the most difficult part of the whole project, mostly because the cutting is fiddly. I drew around a real feather so that I would have a natural feather shape to cut because I wanted my wings to look organic, there are lots of guides on how to make papercut feathers online but I found that the key was to decide on a central spine in the feather and to cut from the narrow base of the feather to the wider tip in precise, narrow cuts as I’ve indicated with arrows below. This helps avoid your cuts overlapping and taking a section out of your wing.

 

2. When you’ve cut your feather shapes out, fold them gently along the pencil mark you’ve made for the central spine of the feather to give them a natural wing shape and colour or paint them in silver. I used a silver sharpie (affiliate link) which I liked because didn’t affect the texture of my paper or weigh down my design.

3. Wrap a ball of cotton wool in gold foil and pierce this through with a cocktail stick to create a frame to attach your paper wings. I dipped the cocktail stick in PVA glue to keep it in position.

4. Spread a small amount of PVA glue on the inner curve of your feathered snitch wing then gently position these on the cocktail sticks. Allow to dry.

5. Fill your small glass bottle with gold glitter and seal in place with a cork. I found the corks that came with my bottles were slightly too large so I trimmed it gently with a craft knife to prevent it breaking when the bottle was sealed. I then threaded gold craft wire through the hanging fixture and wrapped it around the bottle’s neck both to secure the cork and to embellish the decoration.

7. When your snitch has dried, add a small hanging fixture to the top of the snitch, secure (mine had a screw fixture and came from a broken cork lid from my tiny bottles) and string on a wire along with the potion bottle.

 

There you go, really simple and I think it would make a nice project for a Harry Potter fan, or a handmade gift for a Harry Potter fan to hang on the tree.