Sailor Moon Wand Tutorial

My husband had a costume party for his 30th birthday recently, and I made the choice early on to go as Sailor Moon. I was majorly excited about doing so! I had my costume custom made to my measurements, I bought a Sailor Moon wig on ebay.

That left my accessories, the details that would "make" my costume. I bought earrings, odango and brooch from Etsy and loved them! I did try to get a wand and tiara, but due to issues with customs and the seller becoming ill, I didn't receive them.

I had a friend of mine custom make my tiara, she makes some amazing jewellery (you can check her work out here:- http://www.tweetdesigns.com.au/ ). It's made from a thin sheet of copper and small red gem (from Spotlight). I love it and would wear it all day everyday if I would!!

I chose to attempt to make my own wand. Below is a tutorial on how to make one similar to mine, I found that there wasn't many written tutorials online, most were YouTube video tutorials. It is a bit time consuming to do but I'm very happy with my finished product. You do need to be clear a couple hours to do the modelling side of the process, because you need to model it all in one go, as the clay does not stick well to itself once it has dried.

Materials:

Disposable plastic gloves (food prep ones are good as you still have lots of movement and feeling)
5 1/2" length of dowel (I used a 3/4inch thick rod)
Piece of thin card as a template for the crescent moon shape
1x 500g pk of Air Dry Modelling Clay
Bowl of lukewarm water
Hot Glue Gun
1x tube of Iridescent Medium
1x tube of Acrylic Paint (Pink)
1x tube of Acrylic Paint (Metallic Gold)
Small Red Gems (I used smooth but you could use faceted if you wish. I bought mine from Spotlight)
Pva Glue

Process:

1. Draw and cut your crescent moon template. I used the plastic lid from my baby's formula tin for the outer circle, and a small sauce bowl for the inner circle. I also drew a much smaller circle underneath, to get an idea of how it would look once attached to the dowel. Cut out the crescent shape.

2. Heat your hot glue gun. Position your crescent at the end of your dowel rod. Using your hot glue gun, glue to the rod, ensuring there is plenty of glue on either side of the moon. Put aside to dry.

3. Once dry you can start with your clay! Make sure you have your gloves because this will get messy! Have your bowl of water handy too as this will help you to smooth the clay. Start by building a layer of clay around the dowel rod, completely covering it, including the ends.

4. Allow this to dry a little, about 10-15 minutes should do as you don't want it too dry. Roll a small ball of clay approximately the width of your dowel. Once you're happy with it, apply a little water to the flat end of the clay covered dowel and press the ball onto it.

5. Roll a piece of clay into a thin noodle and wrap this around the dowel between the rod and the ball of clay. Wet the clay a little to help it attach. Smooth the noodle of clay upwards on the rod so that it appears to blend into the rod, leaving it circlular above the ball of clay at the end.

6. Now move onto the crescent shape. You will need to add clay to the cardboard bit by bit to build up the moon, rounding and smoothing it as you go. Once you are happy with one side you can turn it around and start on the other. Remember to use your water if you need it to help the clay blend and stick together, it can also help soften it a little if you need.

7. After modelling your moon, you can model the circle/ball shape that goes just underneath it around the rod. Work out how the wand will find it your hand and start the base of the ball shape just above where your hand will stop. You will want to have a semi raised flat circle on either side of the ball to build the mini crescent moon and to attach your gems to.

8. Using a small piece of clay model 2 mini crescent moons, and using a little water attach one to the front and one to the back of the flat sides on the ball shape, towards to bottom, leaving room to stick your gem.

9. Build 4 "wing" shapes, these need to be fairly flat. Attach two to each of sides the ball shape, blending to the raised circle. If you are really good you might even be able to get them to stand out a little supporting themselves. (I couldn't do this and as a result they are slightly attached to the larger crescent moon at the top of the wan, for stability)

10. Once this is done, you can leave it to dry! The hard part is over! It is best to leave it to dry for 2-3 days if you can. (I found mine needed a little more smoothing and areas needing filling, so I bought some grout and used this to fill in areas that needed it. I also used a very fine sand paper to smooth out some of the rougher areas. Be very careful if you do this though.)

11. Once dry you can start your painting! I did 3 coats of each colour, as I wanted it to look as smooth as possible and the clay looked a little porous with just 2 coats. I used a little bit of Iridescent medium in each of my paints to tone down the colours as I found straight out of the tube, they were a little too bright. This helped to tone it  down a bit. Using a paint mixing tray, I squeezed out an amount of paint and mixed in the iridescent medium that way.

I repainted after this, as I felt the colours were too bright. This was when I decided to tone the colours down by adding the iridescent medium.

12. Once you are happy with your paint work, you'll want to seal it and give it a gloss coat. I simply used PVA glue to do this. It is easy to work with and gives it a nice gloss. Again, I did a couple coats of this as I really wanted to seal it. Allow each coat to dry overnight.

13. Once you have put on the PVA glue and you have achieved a happy gloss, add a little PVA glue to the back of each of your red gems and apply one to either side of the ball shape above the mini crescent moon. Once this has set, sit back and look at you're finished wand! :)

My finished product :)

This was the wand I was trying to emulate. I wanted my wand, to be a little shorter so I adjusted for that, I also didn't really want to put the crystal on mine, however if you choose to, I believe you can find them fairly easily online to buy. I think I did pretty well for my first try!

The wand on the left if what I was working from, I found this image through Google Image, I don't recall if I looked up who made the original, by the time I decided to make mine it didn't seem worth looking up as it was too late to order anyway.

If anyone makes one, I would love to see the result!