The Hogwarts Charms, Spells and Potions Book

I really wanted the kids to have Spellbooks as party favors. I looked for some to buy with no luck so we decided to make our own. I wish I could say this was easy. I found the information on the internet and thought oh this will be easy enough to copy into Word, change the font and print at home. I didn't count on Word having some major formatting and spacing issues that took hours to fix. I assume this is because I was copying web content.

I thought I'd be able to print them at home but then realized that a 50 page booklet isn't easy to print if you don't have a duplexing printer. So I thought I'd have it done at Fedex Kinko's. But they didn't have the paper I wanted so I bought that from the Paper Zone and brought my custom stock with me. The black cardstock was thick and with 12 pages of paper the booklets had to be trimmed to look their best. After the hours I'd put into them I figured $5 extra was worth it.

Then I had my husband design the labels using a Hogwarts crest image I found on the internet. We made some modifications in Photoshop and printed them onto full sheet (8 1/2 x 11") labels I purchased at Office Depot. I then cut them with a paper cutter and applied them to my booklets.

I was surprised at the amount of time and money these booklets took but in the end it was worth it. The kids loved them. I anticipate my kids will use them for years. There are references to the books which I hope are accurate but figure if they aren't it'll give the kids something to do to check them.

The finished cover.

The title page. Obviously we aren't real publishers this was just to make them look authentic.

There were three sections: Charms

Spells

Potion Ingredients

Potions

  Each section had a place to take notes at the end.

The Spellbooks on display in "Diagon Alley".

*Edited on 8/20/10. As I said above I got the information for my booklet off the internet. It would be illegal for me to sell the booklets and I don't feel comfortable giving them to others.  If you want to make them yourself that is your choice but as I warn, it was a LOT of work and they are expensive to print. How I did it is explained above. For those whove been unable to find the spell information themselves you can find a list of the spells on Wikipedia and the potions and ingredients at The Harry Potter Lexicon.  There are probably other sources for this information as well.