Marauders' Map Decor from a Dollar Tree Bottle



This is the first post in my Hogwarts in Your Home series. It all started when I saw a similar bottle (made from the exact same Dollar Tree bottle!) being sold for $30 on Etsy. I thought, "I can make that for less than $5!" And I did, but with my own spin on the idea. And now you can too!

I decided after making this bottle that I wanted to do one as a tribute to each House. I figured that this one counts as my Gryffindor tribute.



I found the image I used for the label on the Harry Potter Wikia with the full resolution of the image here.

File:Map Cassius Warrington.jpg


My printer doesn't have any color ink right now, so I just printed it in black and white. If you have parchment-colored paper, you might consider printing on that. Once it's printed, trim the edges so that it will fit onto your bottle.



Once I'd cut it down to size, I burned the edges with a barbecue lighter. Now, this isn't something you should probably attempt inside unless you have a stainless steel or granite sink that you do it in. Even outside, you'll want to do this over your driveway during a non-dry season. Just take precautions. I would hate for you to start a fire that burns down your neighbors' houses because you wanted nicely burned edges on your Marauders' Bottle label.



I'm not very good at this process of burning edges, so I actually did catch most of the edges on fire a little bit, then immediately blew it out and used the end of the lighter to knock off the burning-red edges. If you just blow out the flame but don't remove the still-burning edges, you'll have a lot less paper left than you're planning on.



Once your label is nicely toasted, use a small amount of glue to attach the vertical edges to the bottle. You don't want to attach the top and bottle, because you can get some really weird warping when you glue paper down. I'm sure you've all experienced that. You'll need to hold the label in place for a minute or two while the glue dries enough to hold the label in place.



While the glue dries, you can take this opportunity to cut a length of red and gold embroidery floss. You could use ribbon instead if you want this to be less subtle. I got a fun, big assortment of embroidery floss on Amazon at a little under 10 cents per skein. I got my metallic embroidery threads a la carte at Walmart, but you can pick up a whole set on Amazon. Unless you buy some really expensive metallic thread, it won't be very useful in actual needlepoint, but this stuff is great for other craft projects!



Wrap the threads around the neck and lace on a key charm.



Tie a square knot. Trim the thread ends to slightly different lengths to avoid a too-even look. And you're done! Enjoy your Marauders' Bottle!

Stay tuned for instructions on creating the other Houses' Bottles today, and the rest of the Hogwarts Series this week and next.





Comments

  1. You can use tea/coffee to stain the paper if you use a laser printer. might be trickier for inkjet. Possibly you could pre-stain, but you'd have to make sure that you can flatten it enough to get through the inkjet printer again after it dries -- heat and weight are the key pieces there.

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