Harry Potter Mini Book & Potions Locker - PIC HEAVY

I just finished up my very first swap on Craftster and am rather proud of how it all came together. Thought I'd share details here. The swap theme was One Tiny Harry Potter Thing and we had to craft something under 4". I immediately thought of doing a miniature book. I make mini potions labels and bottles for fun already and I just knew they'd be perfect and I could tuck them inside the book. I created a book from the series called Moste Potent Potions and inside included a recipe for Polyjuice Potion along with the required ingredients to make polyjuice in their own individual little bottles.

Here are the results:

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures until I was done, but here's how it came together:

First I got a gift card "book" from Barnes & Noble. Then using an exacto I separated the pages box from the outer cover and then painted the outer cover with several coats of black paint. Next I applied some grey scrapbook paper as a new endpaper for the inside and then glued the pages box back in place. I crafted tiny shelves and the bottom potions area from light cardboard and glued it in place before painting the interior. Next, I cut out little decorations for inside the box: a potions bottle, mini cauldron & poison bottle. I glued those in place after painting them and allowing them to dry. The potions labels for my tiny bottles are based on a vintage package design, only wizarded up a bit - I made it in Photoshop before printing them out and applying to mini bottles.

Filling the bottles was easy for four of the ingredients, but the last two needed some extra work. The bottles had to contain: knotgrass, fluxweed, powdered bicorn horn, boomslang skin, lacewing flies and leeches. For the leeches and lacewing flies I spent an evening crafting tiny leeches and flies out of polymer clay. The flies wings were cut from semi-opaque vellum.

I used some pretty silver stickers to adorn the front of the book and painted a cool jewelry medallion I found for the front cover so it would match my silver and black color scheme.

For the finishing touch I printed out a teeny, tiny copy of the page of Moste Potente Potions from the Chamber of Secrets movie containing the Polyjuice Potion recipe, making sure to distress it a bit and put some wholes. Then I made tiny polymer clay thumbtacks and glued the recipe and thumbtacks in place.