I aged the book by lightly painting gold luster dust (made liquid by mixing it with a few drops of vodka) along the sides to make the pages gilt-edged. I also used a fine-toothed metal cake comb to better define the pages.
I approximated the HP font for the lettering on the book. It is very hard to cut out fondant with very small detail, without tearing through it. I rolled it out reasonably thin - about 1/8" - keeping it just thick enough to hold its shape. Then I let it sit out for a few minutes to dry a tiny bit. Fresh fondant is stretchy and hard to cut accurately. The thin blade and fine-point tip of an x-acto knife was the easiest way to keep the detail of the letters. After cutting them, I let the letters dry for a few days, and they colored them black with a food-safe marker.
The book needed an extra detail - the logo on the side seemed like the perfect addition. Had I thought about it in advance, I wouldn't have had to bend at funny angles to try to apply it sideways. Oh well, you live and learn.
I used the same method for these letters as for the title, but I painted over the black ink with liquid gold coloring. I love the look of the black and gold together.
I wasn't really sure how I was going to make the wand. I started by combining two shades of brown because I didn't have quite enough - and halfway through rolling it, I realized the marbling looked a lot like real wood. I quickly stopped kneading and starting shaping the wand. Not too perfect, in keeping with the HP wands, and I made it 10" - just about the right size for a beginning wizard.
For one more Harry Potter touch, a Hedwig-like owl kept watch over the book.
Happy birthday to our young wizard friend!
2 comments:
This is just amazing! Wonderful work with (and you really can tell) lots of love!
I really love it and i'm sure the birthday-kid did aswell :)
Thanks, Angi! It was a hit.
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