It's been a while since my last Harry Potter inspired crafts (Cauldron &Pumpkins & Potions Medicine Cabinet), so when one of my colleagues had a baby earlier this year and named him Felix I knew I had to make her something Felix Felicis inspired, because she's also a huge Harry Potter fan.
So I looked online and found a bunch of tutorials on how to make Felix Felicis potion necklaces (for example in this Youtube video). I was originally thinking of just making one big potion vial, like Harry had in the movie and putting this in a wooden box I had lying around, but I only found these tiny teardrop vials online, so I decided to make two necklaces for the parents to wear.
So I started out with a wooden box (a colleague gave this to me a while back, because she knew I would find a way to upcycle it, it had pralines in it originally), a silver and a golden necklace set and the teardrop glass vials with a tiny cork.
This is what the necklaces looked like put together, but without the potion inside the vials.
I mixed the potion fluid with some gold paint and water and carefully inserted it into the vial with a thin paint brush. I still got it all over the sides...
I made 4 vials in total, just in case I screwed up one and I also wanted one for myself. I left them to dry for a couple of days to make sure the paint dried completely.
Now to the tricky part: The wooden box. I really enjoyed my last wood burning project (Weasley Family Clock), so I definitely wanted to decorate the box with a wood burner. Finding the right design was the tricky part. At first I thought of writing something like "All the luck in the World" of "Good luck" on the front, but I thought that was too cheesy. So I came up with the crest symbol and writing the baby's initials in the Harry Potter font.
From the first draft to the first burning. The lines were all super uneven from pushing the burner not enough or too much. Each wood is different! If you want to try this yourself make sure you try out the burner in a place that can't be seen to test how long and hard you have to burn into it.
To make the box look more used and vintage I thinned out some wood stain to darken the wood. I tested the stain on the bottom first to make sure it's not too dark. Make sure you are quickly covering the whole surface, because it is absorbed very fast. Otherwise it looks like a bad paintjob.
Once I tested it on the back I covered the whole box inside and out with the stain.
After the first coat was set and dry I went over everything outside the crest again to make it even darker. The burned crest looks so much better now with the fat lines instead of the two thin ones. This wasn't really the right wood for intricate designs. So I'm really glad I didn't go with the writing!
And here's the finished box:
I covered it with a coat of clear laquer to make sure the stain wasn't rubbing off on anything.
The husband had to interrupt his gameplay to let me back in from the balcony, because the spraypaint was pretty stinky ;)
I sewed up a small pillow with two button tucks to set the necklaces on.
Now all that was left was to glue the Felix Felicis label to the vial. I printed out the label in the right size for the vial and carefully cut it out. Then I used normal craft glue that dries see-through to attach it to the vials and let it dry overnight.
And then I was done!
I got to give my colleague this gift a couple of weeks ago and she loved it! I'm really happy with the way it turned out and hope that they will get to cherish this gift forever <3
Oh, by the way. I shared this with my fellow crafters in the Facebook group Try it, don't buy it! and one of my favorite Youtube crafters Annika Victoria commented on it saying that it's amazing and that she wants to be my friend so she can get awesome gifts like this as well :D Haha, definitely an ego booster!
