Historical Disney - Ariel

The blog has moved, and this post can now be found here:  https://peculiarseamstress.blog/2018/01/19/historical-disney-ariel/

Easter Witch

Last year I wrote this on my private Facebook page, and since I made a broomstick last summer I've been planning to take pictures to match the text. Last Saturday I did.

"In parts of Sweden and Finland it's rumoured that on the 

Thursday before Easter - "Skärtorsdag" - the witches travel 

to Blåkulla to feast with the devil. That is of course rubbish, 

a story made up by Muggles to explain something they fear

 and don't understand. There are in fact lots of brooms in 

the air around Easter, as the annual (and mostly friendly) 

Quidditch match between Sweden and Finland takes place 

Easter weekend, a tradition going back to the late 1700's. 

One would hope that not too many brooms are spotted* though, 

what with the International Statue of Secrecy and all that..."

The post led to discussions on how it began as a national game (Finland had long been a part of Sweden by the late 18th century), and when Finland became Russian, the match was kept as a way to preserve friendliness despite the Muggle wars and politics. By now it's been going on for so long it's unthinkable to stop. Whether or not a certain 18th century Muggle war was the horrid result of arguments over World Cup tickets, or are nothing but slander, also came up.

My outfit was inspired by the way in which Swedish Easter withes (påskärringar) are often depicted, like lower class women from about the turn of the last century. Of course witches don't wear such styles today, but you know I like to dress up historically. I wore my insanely pieced dress, a quilted petticoat, knitted mitts and stockings, a headkerchief, an apron from my kitchen, and a piece of fabric for a small shawl. Besides the broom I also carried a copper coffee pot, often seen in images of Easter witches. One needs a refresher if the Quidditch game gets long, and April in the North is often cold.

*Especially important as Swedish Muggle Police said they'd be keeping a lookout for airborne nuisance and other nasty things this weekend. Just a head's up ;)

Wizarding Halloween 2016

On 31 October four families of friends joined us for our annual Halloween party. Our house was close to overflowing, with ten adults and twelve children, all born within the last five and a half years. The youngest was only a few weeks old. The dress code was “witch/wizard or Muggle”, and most chose to represent the magical community in one way or another. The number of different wands that had been procured for the occasion was rather impressive. 

I had spent the last few weeks putting up decorations here and there, beginning with out of the way things. Most of the decorations I have already blogged about (or will do so), so I’ll not go into great detail about them – if you’re interested you can follow the links to those blog posts. Here's a sort of house tour of how it looked the day of the party.

In the hall the shopping parcels from Diagon Alley where stacked nonchalantly on the window sill, next to a bowl of sweets for trick-or-treaters, and a small "Halloween tree" trimmed with bats, miniature brooms and a black cat. 

In the corner where our pram usually stands I put the broom, an umbrella, some hats and shoes. I left that area pretty empty, as I expected our guests to put their own prams there, which they did.

In the hallway on the way to the kitchen I put a pile of books - I rather liked the image of the toads and mushroom on the cover of one of them. On top of the books I put a jar of dried plants and my twig candle holder (still not sure how I like that one).

Most of the decorations were concentrated to the kitchen, as that's where we'd spend most of the time. The floating candles were up again, but instead of scattering them evenly across the ceiling, I divided them into three groups, one in the corner by the sofa, one above a cupboard and the rest over the kitchen table. I rather like how it came out. Thanks to my mother-in-law who gave me more electrical tea lights to play with :)

In front of the windows curtains of bats were flying - sorry for the poor image quality. The Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff wall hangings were also up.

In the lamp above the kitchen table I had hung various plants to dry, some with tags noting the name of the plant and when it was picked.

In the window above the sink I had a couple of magical plants, and some candles in bottles. 

The bookshelf was filled with potions ingredients, the false book spines and book covers, and a tankard with quills.

The noticeboard was full of ads, notes and flyers from various magical shops, St Mungos and so on. A few hand written letters finished off the look.

I had made new cushion covers for the throw pillows, in purple linen, and I put them on over the green checked cushion covers that was already on them, making one of many small instances of purple and green combined.

On the cupboard in the corner I placed some books, including the miniature guestbook disguised as Tinctures - the Tiny Tome, my miniature forest scene in a bell jar, more candles and our own wands. 

The party was, as usual, ‘bring a dish’, and the theme was “British or Wizarding”, and to accompany the Ginger Newts, green-and-purple biscuits,

the Pumpkin Juice, 

and Yorkshire puddings I hade made,

we had a roast, deep fried potatoes, gravy, roast vegetables, (Little One kept picking food from my plate) 

trifle and cheesecake.

It was a very nice party, but I was very tired afterwards, and for this post being rather late, I can only blame being a bit burned out on the whole thing. But it's not yet time to leave the wizarding word behind; next week my HP-fan sister-in-law and I are going to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, something we're both looking forward to. And of course, several of the decorations and foods mentioned above I haven't posted about more in detail yet.

But that will come when it comes - now I feel ready to start posting about Christmas decorations! 

My First Broomstick

For the longest time I’ve wanted a broomstick of my own – what Harry Potter fan hasn’t? I never ran into the kind I wanted though (except for tolerable looking kid’s Halloween brooms, but unless I got one with the intention that it would be the boys’ toy broom, that would just be silly), so in the end I researched what it would take to make my own. And now I have made one!

 Last spring I found a good sized branch, broken off from a tree at the playground, and thought “perfect”. It wasn’t quite perfect really: it was riddled with worms and such, but apart from that the wood was sound, so I decided I’d use it anyway. When you don’t have forests close by or a car to get you there, you have to accept what’s available.

 I brought the branch home, removed the bark, sawed off the parts I didn’t want.

I smoothed the stick with a knife and then sand paper.

 I stained it with very strong tea, and I set it aside (indoors) for a few months.

For the business end of the broom I collected birch twigs. You are really supposed to collect them before the sap rises in spring, but I didn’t look into broom making until much too late, and couldn’t wait until next year to get started. If I make another broom I’ll try to be more forward-looking.

Close to our home there is a field that seem to have been in disuse for several years, long enough that young birches have had the time to grow a lot taller than me. I felt that I could take twigs from there without anyone minding. When I was sort of content with what I had collected, I stripped them of leaves and put them in the shed to dry over the summer – but not until I had laid them out loosely together with the stick to get an idea of what the finished broom would look like.

A couple of weeks ago I finally assembled the broom. 

I gathered up the birch twigs one by one, and made them into a tight bundle, where the ends of the twigs ended at about the same length, and when possible pointed inwards rather than outwards: when my hand wasn’t enough to hold the bundle together I strapped a belt round it, and continued to add twigs. 

When that was done I used hemp rope to tie them together. I wrapped the rope round a stick to make a handle – that helped me pull the rope really tight without hurting my hands.

I then sawed off the twigs at the top, to make a neat finish. Note to self: if you want a fuller broom, gather lots more twigs than you think you'll need next time, they shrink as they dry.

I cut the stick down a bit, as it was too crooked to easily put the bundle of birch twigs on. It ended up slightly too short, so maybe we’ll have to pretend it was a broom one of us got as a teen, and as we prefer Floo powder or Apparition to flying anyway, we never really bothered getting a new one.

The bottom of the stick was sharpened to a point to make it possible to get it into the tightly bundled up birch twigs. I had to taper the sharpened end even more then in the picture for it to work, but I got there in the end.

When both parts of the broom were finished, I put the sharpened end of the stick into the top of the twig bundle. With the broom upside down, holding on to the bundle, I then pounded the broom, handle first, into the ground, driving the handle into the middle of the birch twig bundle. After a while it felt really sturdy and secure. I washed of the surplus tea - somehow I never got round to that before - and that was that, my very first broom!

It wasn’t really all that difficult, though of course mine isn’t very pretty, having neither the proper tools nor the experience. It’s certainly not a Nimbus or a Firebolt, but all in all I’m happy with it, especially seeing as I never was very good at working with wood.

And now - UP!

Any of you ever tried making a broom? Or have you got a nice ready-made one? Please share links!

Faux Book Covers

This year I have been looking at ways to make our home wizardy for the party without having to remove too much of the Muggle things. The row of faux book spines is one example of this, but I made these faux book covers before them, but fore some reason didn't get round to blogging about them until now. 

They are mostly made from old cartons that originally contained pasta, corn flakes and the like, using scrapbooking paper and in some cases fabric to cover them. A few are made over from old book covers – that’s where I started out and went over to empty cartons once I didn’t have any more rubbish books (yes, they really were rubbish) to use. 

For some of the titles I copied straight from the Harry Potter books (like Enchantment in Baking and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them), and for the rest (Dazzling Deserts by I. Bakewell, Cooking up Magic, and Household Potions by Aurelia Haze) I made the titles up myself. It looks more real and believable if you have a mix of things you know from the books and things that aren’t mentioned there, but fit in with the culture. From Crumb to Cake has the title embroidered in imitation silver thread, but the rest are written with pen, paint or even stamped on – that was before I had confidence enough to trust to my own writing skills.

These books are made to look good even when seen from the side, and they are a great way to hide my Muggle cookbooks; just put a faux cover around one or several cookbooks and they're hidden with very little effort. Fantastic Beasts only have a proper cover on one side though - it’s made more in the fashion of the faux book spines mentioned above, and the side that does not have a cover has holes punched in it, so it can be attached to the row of faux book spines but still look good from the side, if I want to put them in a more open place in future.

They also store easily, fitting nicely one inside another.

Again I styled the shelves for the pictures, and everything might be arranged a bit differently at the actual party. Pictures of that will come after Halloween.

Any of you working on Halloween stuff yet, and if so, what are you making?

A Row of Faux Wizarding Books

Since last year we’ve added a bookcase to our kitchen, and of course I want it looking magical for the annual Halloween party. I decided I wanted one of the shelves covered with wizarding books, or at least looking like it was. I made a number of false book spines to give the illusion of a row of books.

 The faux books also hides the bins containing the children’s craft supplies that sits there, and I won't have to shove them in a cupboard for the party.

I made the “book spines” from empty kitchen towel rolls and scrapbooking paper, on which I wrote the titles, by hand, looking at different fonts found on Pinterest for inspiration. For some I used gold or silver pen, on others I used coloured ones. More than one paper was used on some books to create different looks.

I glued on pieces of ribbon on the back of some of the spines, for bookmarks. I had a silver tassel that I made for last year’s party, but as it didn’t look good on the potions bottle I intended it for, I used this for another bookmark.

I made the titles up myself, trying to make them fit into the magical world, and matching our real life situation and interests, so there are books on housekeeping, child care, textile crafts and gaming.

Left to right the titles are:

A Magical Beginning: Raising Young Wizards

Beguiling Gardening by B. Green

A Magical Home in a Muggle House

Traditional Household Spells

Magical Housekeeping, Volumes I-III

Three’s a Charm

Mrs Crawley’s Guide to Household Pests (the previously unpublished work that a certain Lockhart stole and put his own name on – at least that’s my story behind this book)

Muggle Gaming for Wizards

Charmed Games by P. Cooper

Knitting by Magic by Edyth Stitch

Sewing Spells

Robes from Rags

Enchanting Embroidery

  

 I tried my best to make the books as diverse in style as real books can be, but as they all came from the same mind and hand, those who know me well instantly recognise my style. I drew some “publisher logos” at the bottom of some of the spines, to make them more real looking.

 After all the spines were finished, I punched holes at the sides of them at top and bottom, and tied them together. Now I can easily shift them around or add more “books” some other year if I want to. Connecting them with brads might have been simpler, but this is still a work-from-stash-year, and while I don’t have brads I do have all kinds of string, yarn and thread. I can upgrade in the future.

With regular intervals I’ve glued on pieces of carton to a book spine, so that I can push it in between the craft supply tubs and prevent the “books” from falling off the shelf. Again, by rearranging the spines, I can fit them around other things in future.

They will store pretty easily too – I can just roll them up and put them in a box with all the other Wizarding party decorations.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with how these came out. A couple of the first ones I made are no more than tolerable, but half hidden while lined up with all the others, they look OK. A couple of them I’m very happy with indeed.

Now, I did style the other shelves for the pictures as well, it just looked too weird with all the Muggle stuff that're normally on them. That was quickly done, as we have old, old-looking and/or nerdy things all over the house.

I’ve made other books as well, functioning somewhat differently. I will post those later, even if I started making them first.

If you would make up a wizarding book title based on your own personality and interests, what would it be?

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings – and Magic

For this coming Halloween party I wanted to add some funny-shaped parcels to our decorations, you know, the kind that are wrapped in brown paper with strings round them, with old fashioned and/or wizardy labels attached, dropped off in a corner as if you hadn't had the time to put your shopping away before company arrived. Everything I used was craft materials or things to be recycled that I already had at home.

 

I wanted the parcels to be really light, both for storage purposes and the fact that it will make it lots easier to make them “levitate” or so, should I want that sometime. I used a variety of re-purposed cartons and empty cardboard tubes, and wherever needed I cut them to shape, added bottoms or tops, and stuffed them with crumpled up newspaper so they wouldn’t collapse under lighter pressure. For wrapping I picked brown paper in different shades and textures, to make it more organic and realistic, and I avoided using ordinary tape wherever it might show on the outside. I thought it more likely that grown wizards would use magic to wrap parcels, and a light Sticking Charm to hold them together. Sure there is supposed to be Spellotape available, but what adult and reasonably competent witch or wizard would bother with that when there’s an alternative?

For two of the parcels I used a large Toblerone carton cut in half as base. I closed the ends with taped on “lids” made from milk carton. One of the halves was stuffed full of newspaper so it looked quite fat, the other one I folded and shaped to look decidedly more skinny, made “lids” to emphasise the shape and only put a tiny bit of newspaper in the middle. 

One of them got a label I also used for some of the potion’s ingredients I made last year, based on a chain of apothecaries mentioned in The Half Blood Prince. I also added a tag with a serial number and wrote our last name on it, as if I had went in to order something, and came back later to pick up my purchase, ready packed.

For the other I made a string from green and purple linen thread, and glued on a label in the same colours. The label was all purple to start with, with an embossed pattern. I just filled this in with glittery green pen, and added a couple of letters. I then cut out a piece of green cardstock slightly larger than the purple in size so it made a narrow frame, and glued them together with the string in between.

For the bottle shaped parcel I used an assortment of cardboard tubes that previously held plastic foil and other kitchen items (I always save cardboard tubes, and they always prove useful), an empty cardboard baking powder jar, a short cardboard tube that used to hold crochet thread and a piece of carton, and made a crude bottle shape from them. It didn’t look too pretty as was, but that didn’t bother me, as no one would see it when wrapped anyway. 

Once that was done and a string tied round it, the would-be bottle looked really realistic. I added a label from The Leaky Cauldron – they have lovely non-alcoholic beverages there as well, at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I found the label on-line.

This one was just an empty toilet roll that I cut open and rolled tighter to make it less obviously toilet roll-y. I wrapped it in tea dyed printing paper - I have several tea dyed papers ready to be used for different projects. I found a picture of a weird looking chap in Ca 1830s clothes that I cut out of a magazine years ago when that was my main source of images (meanwhile, I love the treasure trove that is found on the internet), and by cutting down his top hat to be a pointy wizard’s hat, and adding gold accents to the hat and coat, he looked…. Well, he looked a bit like a prat. A wizard prat, but a prat nonetheless, so Prat & Co became the name of the shop. I giggled over that a bit. I made a string for carrying out of some dark brown, really unevenly spun linen thread I was given once.

Here I used a cut down milk carton for the base, and it was sturdy enough to hold up without the help of crumbled up newspaper. I added a label I got of the Internet, and a narrow satin ribbon (it matched the label nicely and I had just enough of it to work) for carrying. In a family like ours, of course you’d have purchased something at a bookshop.

I’m not quite sure what’s supposed to be in all of the parcels, but they do look nice, I think. Put in a wobbly, lopsided pile I think they’ll make a great decoration for our wizarding party. But I might need some more parcels, bigger or square ones to form a more solid base for that to work really well. These will look good as accents.

With different labels, parcels like these might also make nice Christmas decorations. What do you think about them?