*porccio* …Or, How Not to Make a Polymer Clay Wand Handle
I was so pleased with myself for triumphing over The Sewing of Vinyl. My wand holder came out nicely, if I say so myself. I was excited to make the accompanying wand, and had all sorts of beautiful ideas swirling in my head.
I knew I wanted to try a polymer clay handle on a wood wand. But I’ve only ever worked with polymer clay once in my life…six years ago, I made this ST:TNG costume for my (then) baby daughter:
The youngest commander in Starfleet history! (Not as if she had a choice!) This was for an event at the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle; the communicator and rank pips are of metallic Sculpey...and I haven’t touched polymer clay since. Until now.
So, I blended up all sorts of creams and browns in Fimo and Sculpey, and attempted a wood grain. Timid as always, I undermixed.
My first wand looks like it is wrapped in bacon.
Then I found lovely tutorials on wood-grain effects, and tried again. Better; still not what I saw in my mindrealm, but better.
I was really enamoured with the ease of polymer clay, so I went on to create the Professor’s wand:
13 ½ inches of glory. I tried and tried to get the gorgeous Chinese motifs carved into the handle, but I just couldn’t do them justice. Maybe I’ll try again sometime when I get more comfortable with polymer. (Pics/info about my Advanced Potions Text here.)
And, the whole inspiration for the wanding adventures; the wand-holder:
(Sorry for the blurry finger...I was drumming my fingers because I was getting very impatient with this 'photo shoot'.)
From Butterick 5580, part of their “Making History” collection. The only modification I made was to add an elastic casing to the inside, to secure the wand while wearing. I used 1 ½ inch elastic and stitched it to the inside before attaching the scales.
And here's how the casing looked from the top, before the scales were attached:
Instead of stitching all across the upper curve of each scale section, I broke the stitching and backstitched to avoid closing off the casing:
Also, this is a ‘One Size Fits All’ pattern, so I trimmed about ¾” from each vertical edge to make it fit. As suggested by my friends at Madame Malkin’s (a Yahoo Group devoted to HP costuming), I used tissue paper over the vinyl so I could feed the sticky stuff through my machine. It worked perfectly. I was afraid I’d have to buy a walking foot or a Teflon foot, but plain tissue (I just used gift-wrap tissue paper) did just fine.
This pattern was ridiculously easy to make; the trickiest part was cutting and topstitching the scale sections.
I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a distinctive wand holder. Just keep in mind that a long wand will really restict your range of movement if worn in this fashion, depending upon your height (arm length) and wand length. (My wand is 11" long and I'm 5'10", and I'd say that is about the limit, if you want to be able to move your hand at the wrist!)
Happy wanding! :)