It has been 'radio silent' here for a while, life has been busy! Many knitting projects have been completed, work has been humming, and it was the most drawn-out winter weather in my memory... but I have also been working on party kits!
The first kit 'ready to go' is the "Wizard School Hunt." Now live on the Etsy shop HERE.
The kit includes instructions on the gameplay & setup of the room, all puzzles & clues needed to play the game, and solutions pages for all included puzzles, riddles & clues. I have tweaked the game components for easier setup and minimizing 'outside purchases.' While theme-related props will add to the party fun and challenge of finding clues, they are not required to play the game.
The Wizard School Hunt is a 'middle-grade' level game, suitable for 9-13 year olds. The gameplay, clues, and puzzles are more simple than our harder puzzle-based games. The clues in this game are a mix of 'scavenger hunt' straightforward clues, riddle-based clues, and elementary level math & logic puzzles (1 each).
The Wizard School Hunt Kit contains:
Instructions for gameplay & setup
Clue & puzzle solutions
(1) Printed checklist (PDF included with purchase to print additional sheets as needed).
(1) Diary page to start the game
(16) Clue cards
(22) Suspect, Beast, & Location cards
(2) Logic puzzle cards (PDF worksheet included with purchase to print additional worksheets as needed)
(1) Booklist
(1) Math puzzle
(1) Math puzzle lock tag
(1) Floo Powder label sticker
*Qty. (3) Three-digit combination locks are needed for gameplay, not included. This keeps the cost of both the kit and shipping down.
These are professionallyprinted on a luxurious soft matte thick cardstock. I'm not going to lie, they're quite dreamy. 😉
For more details on the party in action, check out THIS post.
Next up, the Escape from Wizard Prison Party Game Kit! This will be a more challenging game kit, heavily puzzle-based, and ideally launching later this year.
"I'm supporting Gryffindor," said Luna, pointing unnecessarily at her hat. "Look what it does..." She reached up and tapped the hat with her wand. It opened it's mouth wide and gave an extremely realistic roar that made everyone in the vicinity jump."
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
Since the last post, I have done some minor tweaking:
I took a hammer to the head. Since the hat was already fairly complete, only minor shaping was possible at this point. So I took a hammer and pounded the foam ball portion of the head (*lightly*) to do some minor additional shaping.
The eyes were REALLY bothering me. They were a tad large, and seemed to be 'glued-to,' rather than 'set-into,' the head... which they basically were. And it annoyed me. So I ripped / cut them out of the head, pounded the eye holes a bit to make them more inset, molded and painted new eyes, and added the new eyes to the head.
I also needed to add the earrings to the ear. It was difficult to find rings large enough to fit the ear, and I didn't want to pay $$ for large hoop earrings either. I ended up finding silicone rolling pin guide rings at Hobby Lobby that were the right size and thickness. I painted them gold and then attached them to the ear.
Finally, I added a 'Weasley is our King' pin to the opposite ear... because it totally fits. I may move it to my sweater when I have the full costume going, but at the moment it is in the ear. Pin can be found at LitJoy Crate, if they are still in stock, HERE.
Jumping in, the first step to making the hat was to saw off the bottom part of the foam ball and duct tape it to the helmet.
Yes, the project started with duct taping a foam ball to a bike helmet.
I had debated whether to only purchase a half ball, as they were less expensive, but I determined that more than half of the ball was needed to get the shape I wanted. I cut off approximately 1/4 of the ball.
Once the ball was securely mounted to the helmet, I sketched out the muzzle front onto cardboard and cut it out. It was also duct taped to the helmet. With the muzzle on the helmet, I sketched out a nose bridge onto cardboard as well, and duct taped this to attach the muzzle and foam ball.
If I were to do this again (which I will NOT), I would have made the nose bridge less steep. In retrospect, this bridge was too gradual and appears more 'bearlike' than lion for my extremely neurotic tendencies.
Muzzle:
I used tracing paper to trace the muzzle and then cut out the shape in both batting and the lion face fabric, a wool felt (this was leftover yardage from another project, years ago).
* Wool felt is more structurally stable than synthetic felt, so seams are stronger and it doesn't melt or go wonky with hot glue.. Essentially, I would highly recommend that you use the 'real' stuff for the face. It is a lot easier to work with. ** Also, a word of caution: If you use any woven textile (flannel included), there is the possibility of unraveling and/or curling of the exposed edges.
I also cut out the nose/ mouth pieces in black felt and hot glued them to the felt muzzle. I added a little extra stuffing in the nose cavity too, to make it 'pop.'
The batting and felt were lightly sewn together with an opening at the top so I could stuff it lightly with some 'Cluster Stuff,' polyester fiberfill. The original hat muzzle has some 'softness' to it, so I did not want the muzzle to be directly applied to a stiff piece of cardboard.
Face:
From this point, I draped some batting on top of the hat and used a sharpie to sketch out the shape I wanted the side face panels to hold. When I cut out the shapes, I pinned them to the head to make sure they worked properly IN BATTING before I made the commitment to cut them out in the felt.
With the 'pattern' that I used for the pieces, I left what I am loosely calling a 'seam allowance' on the fabric. I knew where I wanted each piece to end, but the other pieces would overlap this one and I allowed for a 'fudge factor' to trim the finished face as needed.
Once the side panels were finished, I started gluing the pieces to the head.
The first piece to glue was the muzzle.
The second were the two side face panels.
The third was the middle of the head/ nose bridge. This allowed them to stack how I wanted the exposed edges to stack.
Once the face was finished, I constructed the ears. These were made by sketching out the shape and size onto tracing paper, and cutting out four pieces in the 'face' color.
I left a seam allowance, as I sewed together two pieces (outer ear shape, wrong sides facing), turned right-side-out, then sewed an inner ear line.
I stuffed between the outer and inner ear to make them full.
Once the ears were stuffed, I glued a contrasting felt fabric piece into the inner ear and glued the ears to the head.
I sketched an eye shape onto tracing paper, then once the eye shape was to my liking, I cut out two into black felt and glued them to the head as well.
Finally, I used the same method of batting draped over the head to sketch out and piece together the back of the head. Though the mane covers it, I wanted to have a finished head, in case you see any of the head through the mane.
Whiskers, Eyes & Teeth:
The whiskers were made with a long floral wire. I had a few of these on hand. These were painted black (general acrylic black paint), cut to length, and stuck into the face. The wire sticks into the foam ball and stays in place. I was not too worried about shaping them at this point, as they were certain to get bent around while I continued to work on the head.
* I ended up adding a bead of hot glue on the ends of each of the sharp ends of the whiskers, as they kept scratching me while I was turning the head later. The bead isn't very noticeable, but definitely made a difference on the annoyance of the whiskers.
The eyes and teeth were sculpted out of Sculpey clay (oven bake clay). I had white clay in my stash. The teeth were free formed and baked. The eyes were sculpted by putting the clay in a measuring spoon, so they were equally round on the face of them. I popped the clay out of the measuring spoons and did a little smoothing then baked the eyes. Once the eyes were cool, I used gold and black acrylic paints to paint the color of the eyes onto the clay.
Face Details:
A yellow-gold embroidery floss was used to highlight the nose, eyes and face of the lion. The floss outlined the nose and eyes, and then traced the seam lines of the face pieces to accentuate the seam lines. The seam stitching on the original lion head looked hand-stitched, so I tried to simulate that look, though the actual adhesion of the face is glue.
Mane:
The mane is composed of felt fabric scraps, ribbons, and yarn. This was a complete hodge-poge of what I had laying around. The felt fabric was left-over yardage from old projects, most of the ribbon and yarn were also scraps of what I had laying around. A few (gold) ribbons were bought from Christmas clearance bins.
I found a 'crochet' scrap of trim at a hobby store on clearance for $0.99 and used this as a base netting that the mane was knotted onto. I secured the netting to the head and then knotted layers of the fabrics, ribbons, and yarns onto the netting in layers, making it thick and diverse in textures and colors. The lower layers are darker (more dark brown and siena tones) and the top layers included lighter tans and ivories. It created more depth of tone and color.
Once the scraps were on the head, I went back through the layers and trimmed the tips to make them pointy (they are still the blunt strips in the photo below).
The movie version of the hat looked to be comprised of scraps as well. It really appeared to be eclectic blend of miscellaneous textured and colored scraps in brown, tan, cream, and crimson tones. There are some more 'loose wool' almost moss-like layers in the original hat that I am still scouting out. I will likely continue to add random scraps of fabrics and yarns and ribbons as I find them. But it is relatively complete. The original also had two awesome bronze rings on one ear. I found an amazing ring that, unfortunately, was too small for the size of these ears. I'm still scouting that out as well.
Mane Detail:
Front of the Lion:
I think I am going to do a little touch up to the eyes as well, so the black center of the eye is more 'forward facing.' Minor tweaks are still to come, as I am not completely happy with the final result and I still have *months* before the Halloween party.
“I’m supporting Gryffindor,” said Luna, pointing unnecessarily at her hat. “Look what it does....” She reached up and tapped the hat with her wand. It opened its mouth wide and gave an extremely realistic roar that made everyone in the vicinity jump.”
From the beginning, I really wanted the hat to RAWR! Though the movie never showed Luna's hat roar, the book CLEARLY noted that Luna made her hat roar. I thought this was such a cute, and Luna thing to do. I had to make mine roar.
I created a pocket in the helmet to hold the mechanism, and a pocket in the front of the mouth under the front lip to hold the button. This allowed for me to tap the hat with my wand to make it roar, JUST LIKE LUNA. I did a quick video clip below. A seriously fun nerdy bonus to the hat.
For our annual Halloween escape room party, Husband and I are typically working out details and building the party props and puzzles. The months leading up to Halloween are full of our usual school year schedule... and party planning.
Then, in the week before the party, we realize... Oh. We didn't really think out a costume.
We end up each throwing on a school robe at the last minute. Everyone shows up in spectacular costumes, and I think, "Next year, amirite?"
Thus, this year, I decided that I would start our costumes now. You know, why not make your Halloween costume in JANUARY? 😋
I had this idea in mind for a while, but I knew the costume would take a while to make it 'right.'
I bought the supplies I needed and started assembling the random miscellaneous other supplies that I have hoarded over the years. My inability to get rid of miscellaneous leftover project supplies really came in handy this time!
