Expecto Patronum!

Worked on some patronus-centered projects today.  The main one was the book ends project; spray painting the blocks of wood and the doe/stag figures.

These kind of blend in, but fortunately the spray paint kept a lot of the details on these. 

Started to nail these together first, then one of them cracked, so I'm going to instead paint them first, then just hot glue them together.  

Had an idea this morning, an easy way to do Patronuses (Patronusi? Oh dear, now need to know the plural).  Originally the vague thought was to set up a table with some tarot cards that had animals on them and do a whole thing with divination, etc.  But I'm quickly running out of room to put stuff.  So I came up with instead making a box with a hole for your hand, wherein you'll put your hand in and discover your patronus.  What you'll pull out will be a wee little plastic animal that I've spray painted silver.  Definitely doing this for the party, but I'm thinking it would also be fun to do for trick-or-treaters.  They get a wand...and a corporeal patronus--fun, no?

I tried to get a range of animals, but there was a whole large frog pack, soooo, a lot of people will get frog patronuses. 

Here they all are painted silver.  Again, they blend in, but the detail on these is still pretty cool. 

Some close ups of these.  I love the elephant and the sting ray (not shown).

Lots and lots o frogs

I'll need more to cover ALL the trick-or-treaters, but I figure the dollar store might be a good spot.  Part of it was just trying to get enough variety with these.  I feel like I'm pushing it a bit with the sea creatures, so I think I'll just try and keep an eye out amidst thriftstore/$ store shopping.

Oh, also put the final sealer on the tiles, so they're ready to get felt put on them and so are nearly done. Woot!  Also made a set to put out in the Gryffindor common room that were solely Gryffindor themed.   Once they're dry, I'll put a sealer on them, and all the coasters will finally be DONE.

**UPDATE**

Put together the book ends.  Unfortunately the blocks of wood have a few spots that got some paint gummed up, and the deer figures were a little harder to attach--but I think I finally got them firmly attached.  

Finally attached the felt feet to the coasters.  Also put some felt on the House Crest coasters with semi success--the first couple didn't turn out too well.  May or may not offer them up as a prize.

All that's left on these is to tie them up with some of the Hogwarts ribbon.

*UPDATE*
ALL done!  Yay!