Easy Accessories for Harry Potter-themed Costumes

River showing off the double pocket sewn into his robe: one for his wand, one for his glasses

I made the kids' wands using disposable chopsticks and hot glue and mine using a regular chopstick, hot glue, and a metal flower button. I found several tutorials for making wands, and just adapted them to how I wanted the wands to look. Basically you glob on the hot glue to form the base, then layer it until it looks right. It takes a little time as you wait for the glue to cool in between layers, but it's pretty easy.

I put the button in the end of my wand because I felt that Prof. Sprout would have something plant related on her wand :) Once the hot glue was how I wanted it, I painted the wands dark brown. After the brown paint dried, I wiped black paint on, then off again. This left black paint in the crevices and gave them depth and made them look more realistic.

River's wand is shorter because he managed to break off the tip

And just to make things a bit more fancy, I painted gold paint on the twirly bits and the flower. If I make more wands, I'll use a cooking chopstick for mine and a regular chopstick for the kids' since the ones I used were a bit shorter than I really wanted.

Sunshine's wand pocket and some other views of my wand

I made Gryffindor house ties using thin yellow duct tape and some maroon ties we already had. The tape was quick and easy to use, though it did result in shiny stripes. You can't have it all, I guess. 

I really only needed to put the tape on the upper portion of the tie, but my ocd wouldn't let me stop there, so I taped up the whole tie. Luckily it didn't take long- I just eyeballed the spacing of the stripes.

Here's a better shot of the neckline of the robe. I only used one frog to hold the robes shut, but I believe the movie robes had two frogs. I cheaped out and only used one on each because they were $4-5 a piece and I was trying to spend as little as possible. House patches can be found on eBay or Amazon for a few bucks. The ones I purchased were iron-on.

You can see the pleats in the hood of the lining- it's mirrored by a pleated hood of black fabric. I made two identical robes, then sewed them together along the edges of the hood/front placket and the sleeves. I had to make sure everything was lined up properly before sewing so that when I turned it right side out everything looked right. I may or may not have had to pick out and re-sew a seam or two :) The effort was worth it, though, since the results look good. After everything's right side out, I hemmed the bottom, which I had left open.

I included this picture in River's Harry Potter costume post, but I needed to include it here as well since it's an accessory and this is the accessory post. These would work better if River was a little older/bigger, but for $1 I think I did ok.

This is the wool sweater I felted in the washing machine. I used the front panel for the shawl and embellished it with a scrap of drop cloth and some fake leaves and a pinecone. The felted wool didn't need to be hemmed- I just cut it into the shape I wanted. I hot glued the drop cloth scarf around the neckline of the shawl because it was itchy and it made it look better.

And here's a shot of the front of my robe, with all the gathers I put in. I used a button and a loop to keep the robe closed.

I used a dollar store witch hat for the base of my hat. I used some old fabric to cover the hat, hot glueing it in place. I also hot glued some fake leaves around the brim of the hat.

Unfortunately, the first iteration of the hat was too heavy, so I peeled off most of the leaves, scrunched the hat down a little, and added a little fabric around the base to cover some of the hot glue mess and make it look a little more slouchy. I thought Prof. Sprout would wear an old, slouchy, casual hat in the greenhouses.

I was afraid the thin wire frame of the hat wouldn't stand up to all that I put on it, but it held it's shape really well.

I cut a squarish circle of pink fur and gathered the corners into a circle shape. I sewed some pink polka dot velour fleece over that mess, which made it more comfortable on my ears.

I safety pinned some elastic to the inside brim of the hat, and then safety pinned the muffs to the elastic so they would hang just below the hat. I situated the elastic so the muffs were hanging over my ears, and the elastic ran around behind my neck, under the low bun in my hair. This kept the hat on my head without it slipping around or being too tight. The fake ear muffs were also a lot cooler than real ear muffs would have been.

I used some leftover pleather and some hot glue to turn these old, worn out work gloves into dragon hide gloves. I cut the pieces of pleather to fit the flex points of the gloves and look like scale-like.

The two sprouts on the mandrake hat are close together and better balanced than a single sprout would have been, especially since the hat was on a wiggly toddler's head. I hot glued the leaves in the two corners of the top of the hat, then started wrapping each corner with the yarn until it looked good.

And here's the plant pot after I cut it to fit around the baby carrier. You can see the wire loops and ribbon I used to tie the pot to the straps of the baby carrier. I layered brown, black, and green paint to make the bright orange plastic pot look older and well-used. The mandrake sign was stuck to the pot with super-sticky double sided tape.

More details are also in each of the costume posts, so check them out as well.

Easy DIY Harry Potter-themed Costumes
DIY Harry Potter costume
DIY Hermione costume
DIY Hagrid costume
DIY Mandrake costume
DIY Prof. Sprout costume