Harry Potter Potion Bottle Tutorial

Hello friends!

I am sharing a short tutorial with you on how Mary and I made the Harry Potter potion bottles that are hanging on my Harry Potter Christmas tree.

As you will see, a lot of these photos were taken last year with my original HP tree. This year, I upgraded to a larger flocked tree. Honestly, I could have swore that I wrote a tutorial for this last year but I cannot find a post on the blog nor an unposted draft of it. My apologies.

Let’s talk about the bottles…most of the ones you will see on this post were purchased at Hobby Lobby. These can be found in the glass section and usually come with the cork top. We chose the smallest glass bottles they had. The plastic ones didn’t look authentic. The glass does weigh more, so finding smaller bottles is important.

For the labels, Mary found various labels on Pinterest provided by various bloggers and loyal Potterheads. We shrunk the labels to the size of the corresponding bottles and printed them out. For many, Mary burned the edges for an aged effect. You can see the Pepperup Potion label was printed, cut and then burned.

On some of the simpler labels, we stained them with tea before cutting them out and burning the edges. The bottle above was lightly stained with tea. I simply sat a tea bag in a small amount of water and let it sit until the water became tea colored. Since these labels are so small, painting the tea-tinted water onto the labels worked fine. After the paper dries, you can paint additional coats of the tea water on until you get the color you want. If you want the labels darker, squeeze as much of the water out of the tea bag and then just sit it on the label for a few hours or overnight.

Mary had chosen to make potion bottles when I first decided to design a Harry Potter Christmas tree. We researched many different liquids to use as well as the materials needed to mix for various “potions”. I found that any liquid with an oily base would stain other ornaments stored with it and leave a trail of frustration. The bottles that we used have cork tops but even when you glue the cork tops to the bottle, leakage occurs. After many failed attempts, I decided to try Quick Water. (FYI…Quick Water does not have an indefinite shelf life. I had bought a box many years ago for a craft project that never happened. I remembered having it and searched for days until I finally found the box. We opened it and the mix was dry and hard as a brick. )

We chose several ways to make our potions inside of the bottles. Mary first decided what each bottle was going to be, cut out the label and prepped the what was going inside before we mixed the QuickWater. As you can see in the photo below, we lined up the bottles, placed the contents needed in the bottle and then sat the label in front.

Colored eye shadow was used for color with a little sparkle.

Once all of the bottles were filled with their decor, the QuickWater was mixed (following the directions on the package) and poured into each bottle using a funnel. Long bamboo skewers were used to stir the colors into the QuickWater and place items in the bottles. Once mixed, the tops were sealed, labels glued on using Mod Podge and some bottles got embellishments on the outside.

Unicorn Blood was made using eye shadow stirred into the QuickWater. A unicorn pendant (found in the jewelry section of Hobby Lobby) was tied to the outside using twine.

Dragon Heartstring was made by mixing gel food coloring into the QuickWater. Spanish moss is in the bottle for the heartstrings.

Felix Felicis is made with orange gel food coloring and QuickWater mix.

The bottle of Gillyweed is one of my favorites. Tiny little seashells are laying on the bottom and a few strands of green moss are suspended in the dried QuickWater to look like seaweed. We did not use any food coloring for this one.