Snitches -- The Deathly Hallows version with Resurrection Stone

The Deathly Hallows version of the snitch. They turned out really well, everyone was thrilled!

Hello, all!
FlightlessPhoenix and The 5th Marauder here. This is our first post for this blog, and it's on snitches! We're making a few different kinds of snitches, depending on the use.  The first sort of snitch that we made is from the last movie. If you have not read/watched the last book/movie, SPOILER ALERT!

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Space to stop
reading if you
don't want to
spoil the book/movie
for yourself 
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Items needed:
Newspaper or regular paper or tissue paper
Flour
Water
Paintbrushes
Balloons
Rocks (just from outside) (Could also use clay)
Key rings or a circular object that is ring-sized
Black paint
Black fabric paint (alternatives noted below)
Gold Spray Paint
Aluminum tart shells (optional; alternatives noted below)

So what we're going to do here is we're going to make a snitch that can be opened to reveal a Resurrection Stone. First off, go outside and find a bunch of relatively flat and small rocks. They should be fairly smooth and light enough to mount on a ring. Bring those rocks inside and wash them off.

Paint the rocks black. Once they are dry take your black fabric paint and draw on the Deathly Hallows symbol, pictured below if you don't know what it looks like:

The Deathly Hallows symbol.

You should draw the symbol on the side that will not be glued to the key ring. Let those dry.

I suggest black fabric paint because it stands up off of the stone and makes for a neat effect. However, similar results could be achieved by using white or hot glue and painting the glue black when it dries.

Next, take the key rings and hot glue them on to your stones on the other side (the one that the Deathly Hallows symbol is not on). It should resemble a ring.
If you'd like to use clay, I'd suggest using a toothpick to carve the Deathly Hallows symbol into the clay and then paint it afterwards for the 'engraved' look.

This isn't amazing quality (a bit blurry) but you can see the effect created by the fabric paint and how it is raise up off of the stone.

If you don't want to make your own, an alternative for the Resurrection stone/ring would be to buy plastic rings and paint them black and put the Deathly Hallows symbol on it. We had originally planned to do this but could not find plastic rings, therefore we made our own rings.

Now comes the paper maché part. Take a balloon and open up the part you blow into wide enough so that you can drop one of your Resurrection rings inside. You will probably need someone to help you with this as it takes a lot of effort to open the balloon wide enough. Then blow it up a tiny bit and squish the air out of it enough so that you have a small ball approximately the size of a snitch (although it will be a bit bigger). Tie it off, making the end hang out as long as possible so that the snitch is as round as possible.

Cut your newspaper or regular paper (makes no difference what kind, you can use tissue paper too for a different effect) into itty bitty strips (we had triangles about 2cm by 2cm by around 3cm). The smaller the pieces the longer it takes to make the snitches, but the smoother the snitches will be. Next take some water and flour and mix it together (preferably in an older bowl as sometimes the glue can be difficult to scrub off). Add more flour or water as needed until you achieve a fairly thick glue. I find that a ratio of about 2/3 flour to 1/3 water works most times.

Next take your paintbrush (just a cheap plastic one, PLEASE don't use an expensive one, as it may glue the bristles together). Cover a part of the balloon containing the resurrection ring with glue and put strips of newspaper over it. Cover the newspaper with glue as well. Continue to coat the ball in newspaper until you have one layer done. (If the instructions on how to paper maché the newspaper on you can always Google it, as there are more detailed how-to's out there). Cut a small hole in the end that will not be the snitch (i.e. the part that you tied off; see the picture below for reference) and thread a string through it. Tie the string to something so that the Snitch dries without sticking to anything.

Once the snitch dries you will have to do a second and possibly a third layer to make it more sturdy. Once you are satisfied with the thickness of your snitch, have someone hold the end that is sticking out and poke the balloon with something sharp so that it pops. Pull the balloon out and paper maché to cover the hole, being sure to keep the Resurrection ring inside. 

Since it's night and we're dead tired, this is not the best lighting to show off our snitches. But here are our paper maché snitches in progress with the Resurrection Stones inside. You can see that they are hanging by their ends.

**Later edit**

Here's a much better lit version of the paper maché snitches in progress.

A close up of a particularly round paper-maché snitch.

Now, to finish up, you might want to add a bit of detail to your snitches by taking either white or hot glue and creating a design on the sides. (See the photos at the top for an example of this). This will create a raised pattern that looks cool when spray painted gold. If you don't want to do this, spray paint the entire snitch gold (you'll have to do one side, wait for it to dry, then turn it to get the bottom). You can then attach wings to it. You can use any method you like to create wings, whether you use pipe cleaners and construction paper, or make them the way we did.

To copy our technique, all you need is some aluminum tart shells or pie shells. I saved mine from tarts that we had made previously, then washed them up and used them. To get the wing shape, just flatten the tart shell as best you can in half (so it becomes a semicircle) and cut out the bottom (smooth) part of the shell. Next, cut a wing-like shape out of the shell and you now have two almost identical silver snitch wings!

I found that the bumpy texture of the shell added to the "wing" look, but if you don't like it you can always just use regular aluminum foil sheets.

For the pie shells, do the same thing, but you'll just have to cut the wings out slightly differently. You can even use the bottom of the pie shell, if you wish (we did) and accordion-fold it to achieve a similar "textured" effect the outer rim has.

Hot glue the wings on and voilà! You now have a lovely snitch concealing a Resurrection stone :)

There are two more things you might want to do, but by no means need to:

1) Get a gold pen or a very small tube of fabric paint/glitter and write "I open at the close" on your snitch

2) Spray paint the wings of your snitch gold - this is entirely up to you. I always imagined the wings to be silver, so I left them that way, but gold wings would look equally nice

The front view of one of the snitches. Because the wings are made of tart shells, it is easy to bend them so that you see them from different angles.

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