The "How-To's" of our Harry Potter Guest Room

So this might be a little backwards, as I am writing this post first.....
But I wanted to share with you the "how to" and what we did to create the Harry Potter themed room in our home.

I knew I wanted a HP room.  Probably not right away, but the idea came to me, and grew and grew and grew.  It seemed like it would be a fun idea.  A great little escape from reality to the land of Hogwarts and Harry Potter.

And, I think I nailed it on the head.  I absolutely LOVE the room that we created and I am so excited that I'm sharing it with everyone!

But, the how to stuff has to be shown too, and it's better that's in a separate post so that everyone can just enjoy the amazingness that is the HP guest room in it's own post.

So, in our Milan, this room is right off of the stairs, next to the laundry room (noted as Bedroom #3 in the floor plans).

I want to start off with the sketch that made all this start....
Long story short- I sold off all of my Jamberry stuff (I had a TON, and I wasn't a consultant any longer) and used that money to create this masterpiece.  When I brought the ideas to hubby, he wanted to SEE what I was talking about.  So, I drew him a sketch of what I wanted:

Now, don't laugh.... It was a rough sketch of an idea I had.
And hubby wanted to see, so I drew this pretty quickly.

But, here's what it turned into:

See?  Pretty darn amazing, isn't it?!

So, the how.  Obviously, I did some sketching and such to make sure my wall space would support the four house crests. We also had to figure out colors that worked best (this was SEVERAL trips to Home Depot for color samples).

Let's start with the colors:

Paint samples EVERYWHERE, haha!

The room can be divided up into "parts"- and there is almost a different color on every wall!

For the Marauder's map wall, we used Behr Apple Turnover.
For the Hogwarts Mural wall, and the closet wall, we used Behr Dark Crimson.
For the Patronus wall, we used Behr Express Blue {this is also the color of our morning room and mud room}
For the house crests wall:
The brown on the bottom is Behr Joshua Tree.
And the crest colors are as follows:

Gryffindor is Behr Dark Crimson and Behr Cake Spice.
Ravenclaw is Behr Flashy Sapphire and Behr Flint Gray
Hufflepuff is Behr Unmellow Yellow {used in our basement} and Behr Black {which we had leftover from our stencil project in the foyer}
Slytherin is Behr Grasslands {which we also used in our basement} and Behr Flint Gray

And, when put together- they make this:

And how did I do this? Pretty easy, really.  Well, at least I hoped it would be easy and then it was- lol!

I first measured the wall and broke that measurement into 4 pieces so I knew where to put my "boxes".
Then, I ordered my wall decals of each house crest.  Those came from Etsy shop Modern Vector.  They had the perfect sizes for what I wanted to do!
Once the house crests came in, I laid them out and traced over them.  I used a roll of paper from IKEA.  I had to double up on the paper to make it large enough.... But my idea was to make kind of an outline larger than the decal so that it had a white area to sit on top of once put on the wall.

Here's a few pictures of me doing that:

nice and flat wall decal

put the roll of paper over the top

double up on the paper so it covers the complete image

figuring out how far out I wanted to make the "outline"

look closely- I've completely outlined the Ravenclaw crest

cut it out!

After I had all four of the house crests cut out for their outlines, it was time to paint!  We used a laser level that we had purchased for our basement project (which I now realize I never really showed the entire basement off to the blog world, so I need to do that!!!) and drew a bunch of lines!

Taped off and starting to paint the brown that goes on the bottom of the wall

Lines- all measured out and ready to be painted!

Another angle of the lines

Once I had the bottom half painted brown, and the lines drawn for the four house crests, I put the outlines of the crests on the wall so I could trace those ONTO the wall.

All 4 house crests taped to the walll- had to make sure we liked the placement, and straight-ness, centered-ness, etc.

I traced all 4 house crest outlines on the wall once we decided we liked them where they were (that grey blob on the wall is primer- we had tested out a few paint colors on the wall so I just covered them up).  Once the outlines were done, it was time to tape!
Now, this was a bit time consuming.  I could only paint a couple colors at a time, based on location of that color, and making sure it wasn't butting up to another color that was being painted to.  Take a look:

All taped up for round 1

Close up of Gryffindor, all taped off for round 1

Slytherin all taped off for round 1

Where corners of colors meet up. Also take into account that I'm painting the outline of the crests on here too!

Taped off for round 1, so let the painting begin!  I started out with my grey color, since TWO of the house colors had grey in it.  This is some of the reason why the crests are placed in the order they are... I didn't want colors to be back to back against each other if they were the same color.

Grey first

Then, Gryffindor gold and the black for Hufflepuff

BEAUTIFUL clean lines! You can see the crests starting to take shape as painting was going on.

Round 1, DONE! On to round 2 of taping and painting.  We had to wait for everything to dry from these before starting the next round of taping.

Once all of the house colors were on the wall, it was like something magical had happened.  Like, that silly sketch I started out with had taken a great shape and became this super amazing house crest wall:

Once the tape was removed from this part of the process, we let everything dry, and then I started to paint the INSIDES of the house crests white.  I had pencil marks all inside the walls, so we wanted to make sure it was crisp and clean.

close ups of the finished product

After all that paint dried and set for a bit, we added the house crest decals.  The shop I got them from is mentioned above (and will be mentioned again in a post with where I got EVERYTHING we put into this room).  The first one was a bit tricky to do, but after that they just went on so easy and turned out so awesome:

The painting on the rest of the walls was just your typical painting.  We did put primer on the 2 walls that had the Dark Crimson color, just so it was easier to paint.

So, just a few more photos and then I'll call it a day here.  The reveal and all the photos you can possibly imagine will be in a post following this one!


Starting with some "before" photos of the room.  It's been a guest room since we moved in.  This bed is now in the other spare room we have, and the dresser made its way into a closet.

Crosley checking things out and trying to figure out what I'm doing taking photos of the room that always has the door closed.

Here we tested our paint colors.

Marauder's Map wall

House Crests wall

Closet- Dark Crimson Wall and Patronus wall

Painting the doors black was one of our first projects that we did.  So, I closed the door just to get the idea of what it looked like "before"

Hogwarts wall mural wall- tested both Dark Crimson and Joshua Tree (brown) colors on this wall because I was torn at first as to what color to put on this wall.

"My Patronus is a Sheltie"- probably the exact words I sent hubby when Cody sat here.  We knew what was on this wall, but we hadn't shown the "world" yet, so I couldn't show it off to anyone else.  

A teeny tiny Chance Pants checking out the colors of the room. He was very curious (and probably only 3-ish months old here) as mommy went around putting weird things on the wall.  He wanted to help.

Protector of the laser level.

Chance did eventually find some paint to stick his paw in.  Light color, luckily.

primed walls

primed walls

Contrast of colors once it was all painted.  Dark Crimson and Express Blue <3

Marauder's Map wall (with the contrast of the Dark Crimson wall too)

And, that's the "how to" for the biggest part of the project.

If you're curious where I got everything for this room.... check out that post here:  The "Where I Got It" Post

Another "how to" I can go over really quick is how I did my little Great Hall homage.  I have some hanging candles in one corner of the room.  See them here:

There are more photos in my reveal post, so you can truly appreciate how fun these are.

The candles for these were bought off of Amazon {link to where I purchased them is in my Where I Got It post}.  They are battery operated, and I turn them on/off with a remote!

To make this, I bought an embroidery hoop from the craft store.  I painted it "antique gold"- which is paint I have for another project I'm working on.
Then, I took each individual candle and tied fishing line around them.  I made them various lengths and then put them on the hoop, spacing them out just a bit so they weren't on top of each other.
Once I had them in place, I took a hot glue gun and glued the fishing line that I had tied on the embroidery hoop. This way they really stayed where I wanted them.
I took additional fishing line and tied 4 pieces to the hoop.  This acted as the top part that goes to the ceiling.  I got some hooks from the hardware store and put them in the ceiling, and VOILA!

Great Hall candles hanging in our very own Harry Potter Guest Room!


And, a final "how to":  House Points!
I found this on a blog via Pinterest.  Click the link here if you want to check out that original post.

So, supplies.
I rounded up supplies from the Dollar Tree, Michaels and Hobby Lobby.
Specifically:  The glass containers, candle holders, and red and green sand came from the Dollar Tree.  Blue Sand came from Michaels, and the Yellow Sand from Hobby Lobby.
I also needed some hot glue, which I pretty much keep readily available in my craft room.

The House Crests on the front of each glass container was also found online. Check them out here.

I was able to print them to the size I wanted {using white cardstock}, and then I used my Cricut to cut them out so I had super amazing and perfect cuts.

For the How To.

I first used the hot glue and glued the glass candle holders to the bottom of the glass container.  

Next, I filled each of the four containers with one color sand.  I decided the amount of sand I wanted in each one.  Obviously Gryffindor got the most, because well, Gryffindor.  I used a funnel to get the sand into each container to avoid a disastrous mess.

The glass containers each came with a little cork top, so once I had them filled, I hot glued the cork to the opening so if something falls over, it won't make a mess.

Finally, I took some little stickies I had, attached them to the crests, and VOILA! DIY House Points that were cheap and are super fun!!

I will have a separate post for "how to" for my Mirror of Erised, as it's a pretty in depth project that I can do step-by-step directions :-)

Next post will include a list of everything we got for this room, and where we got it from.  I have a feeling for a while this is going to be a "work in progress" room.  I have TONS more I really want to buy for it, and a few projects I want to create to add to the room.  But, I couldn't hold off any longer showing it off.  It's a magical place.  A place to just escape the day, relax, or just admire.