A Crafty Chick: Diagon Alley - Gringotts Wizarding Bank

After the invitations were designed I had to start thinking about the order of the party. The first experience Harry had was going to Diagon Alley to shop for all of his supplies. I wanted the girls to have a similar experience.

I started by decorating the lamppost with the appropriate signs. I had done the same thing for the Wilderness Explorer party and I had kept the arrow signs (just in case) which worked out well because I didn't have to remake them.

I had one sign for Diagon Alley, Hogshead, Hogwarts and King's Cross Station.

For the Hogmeade sign I used my Cricut to cut out the letters and printed out a photo of the Hogsmeade welcome sign at Universal Studios. I also used my Cricut to make the King's Cross sign and the Hogwarts sign.

We had originally planned for Diagon Alley to be set up outside in the driveway but the weather prohibited us from doing that so everything was set up inside the garage and the Diagon Alley sign hung up on the garage.

I had seven "shops" in Diagon Alley and we started with Gringotts Wizarding Bank.

I had a very old, small, goldish table that I thought would be perfect to set up our Gringotts. The idea behind Gringotts was to introduce the kids to Wizarding money. In the books and movies Harry's first stop in Diagon Alley is Gringotts where he withdrawals some gold in order to purchase his school supplies. I wanted the kids to have some of their own wizarding money as well as to follow the same path as Harry.

I went to Michael's and purchased small drawstring bags and some iron-on paper. I found the Gringotts logo online and followed the directions on the iron-on paper in order to put the logo onto the bags.

I also printed out little withdrawal tickets but I ended up just rolling these up and putting them into the bags along with some plastic gold coins that I bought at Party City.

I thought about using chocolate coins but considering that the kids would be receiving a ton of candy at the end of the party I thought they would rather have plastic coins that they could play with at a later time.

I wanted to have some money scales like the goblins have at their desks in the movies but I was having a hard time find one that didn't cost a fortune. I knew I was going to have to make one.

Goblin at Universal Orlando's Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts ride

I finally found some directions on Pinterest on how to make the scales. I had to improvise a little but it came out okay. I went to Michael's and bought a wood candlestick. Next I went about creating the dishes and arms to the scale. The arms at the top are made from a plastic hanger with the hanging part at the top broken off, and I added some accents with hot glue, and then again spray painted the whole thing. The dishes are created out of gold plastic plates, and gold ribbon that I bought at Michaels (on clearance). I just glued those to the hanger, and placed the hanger on top of the spikey part at the top of the candlestick. It doesn't actually work but Bug-A-Boo loves it and it is now a decoration in her Harry Potterish bedroom and she uses when she is playing Harry Potter.