*Perfect for Poofing*

Our resident princess Kaci was using a chop stick as a wand yesterday and being the crafter and frilly encourager that I am I couldn't let my daughter use a chopstick... no no no. What would the neighbors think? So I found myself cranking out a wand at 6 last night. Not just any wand, a sparkly poofy one. I made the older girls ribbon wands for swirling for Christmas but they were too long for Kaci so I made her a revamped version yesterday. I got the idea for shorter ribbons from Karen who I think is blog-less but I crafted next to her at Christmas time and loved her spin on the classic ribbon wand. Thanks for the inspiration Karen! I think every little girl needs one so I did up a poorly lit tutorial as I was making Kaci's. Enjoy!

-Supplies-

• 1/2" (white tip) dowel cut to 12" long. You can make 3 wands with one dowel.
• 9/16" screw eye
• Light weight scrapbook paper cut a little less than 1 3/4" wide x 12" long.
• Ribbons, trims, ric rac, tulle, sequin strands, fairy princess stuff in different widths.
• Paint to match paper
• Mod Podge
• Paint brush
• Sparkly paint (optional)
• Wax paper for painting and modge podging on.
• a push pin (helpful but not necessary)
  
  

Paint just the ends of the dowels with a coat or two of paint and let dry. This usually only takes a few minutes if you are impatient like I am and do two coats at once.

Using your paint brush, paint a coat of mod podge about halfway across the back side of the paper lengthwise.

Put your dowel on your patterned paper where you painted the glue, lining up the dowel ends to the paper edges and roll your dowel so the paper sticks. Smooth out any air bubbles as you roll your dowel.

Paint a coat of mod podge on the rest of the inside of the paper making sure to get up close to the dowel so the entire paper is covered inside with glue.

Roll the paper the rest of the way around the dowel until the paper overlaps onto itself. Smooth out any air bubbles.

Paint a thin coat of mod podge over the entire outside of the wand. This seals the paper and makes it somewhat kid proof. If you aren't adding sparkle paint, paint a second coat of mod podge after the first coat dries. This step is where the wax paper comes in handy. If you set your wand down on accident, ahem, then it just peals right back up ;o).

Using a push pin or other pointy thing start a hole for your screw eye to go into on one end of the dowel. If your screw eyes are sharp you don't have to do this but mine are super dull. You could drill a tiny hole too, I just use what I have lying around so a push pin it is!

Screw in the screw eye. I'm not even sure I needed to explain that part...

Paint on a coat of bling. Very important step for a Kaci wand! I think it's easier to paint on the sparkles after the screw eye is in, hey maybe I should have done that with the mod podge to, so you have a handle. The sparkle paint I used took forever to dry so I used the eye to hang it up for about an hour.

Cut your trims different lengths somewhere around 12"- 18" or so. I think it looks cuter when you use different lengths but you can also trim them after you're done. I used about 8-10 cuts of ribbon but you can add as many as will fit through your eye. Stack them and slide them through the eye at the same time. If you want it to look professional you can heat seal the ribbons as well.

Tie all the trims into a double knot.

Now your ketchup faced little princess can poof to her hearts content with a real wand.

You can use this tutorial to make the long ribbon wands you'll just need one cut of 1 1/2" ribbon that is 2 yards (6 feet) long per wand and tie that on instead. Kaci had so much fun pouffing that the older girls asked me to transform their old wands into wands like Kaci's. The possibilities are endless- very fun!

If you make some send me the pics, I'd love to see!!!

* I realize I spelled poof and mod podge wrong the first, oh I don't know, 4 times I edited this but I'm under the influence of cold medication and pouf really is a word. So all English teachers reading this post can now focus on my terrible use of the English language and not so much about how I spell it :o). Plus it made Cody feel so much better after I changed it.

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