Harry Potter Vacation Memory Box

 

I have been making these memory boxes for each of our trips for the last four years. I love that they hold a little piece of history, making it easy to walk down memory lane while keeping all of those memories picked up and in one spot. This is the fourth memory box I have made and easily my favorite. You can’t beat a Harry Potter one. You can find the one I made for our New York City Trip here , our beach trip here and our Disneyland trip here.

Since this box represents our first ever trip to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter I stuck with Gryffindor colors and vinyl lighting bolts. My 8-year-old argued that the box should be blue and bronze since she is a Ravenclaw, but since I’m a Gryffindor, my house won out.

For this project you will need:

• a flat wood box with a latch
• burgundy and yellow paint
• masking tape
• a photo from your trip
• a Cricut
• Cricut Tools
• black vinyl
• Mod Podge
• foam brush
• Memorabilia from your latest trip

 

Paint your entire box yellow, including the bottom and the sides. You could paint the box in any of the other house colors if you wanted but I am sticking with Gryffindor. Since yellow is going to be easier to paint over than the burgundy, we used it as our base color.

 

Cover the top and sides of your box with masking tape strips. Use the tape as a guide to know how far apart to place the stripes.

Paint over the box again with red and then allow the box to dry completely. Peel the masking tape off the box giving you your Gryffindor stripes.

 

Find a photo from your trip that kind of symbolizes the trip. For our picture, I used one of our family in front of Hogwarts. Print a copy of the photo that is about 3.5×5 in size. 4×6 pictures take up just a little too much of the lid and you don’t want to cover up your paint job. Add a thin coat of Mod Podge to the back of your photo and secure it down to the middle of the box. Add a thin coat of Mod Podge over top of the photo to seal it to the box.

I make a lot of Doctor Who and Harry Potter projects and one of the questions I get asked the most is how I make them without cartridges. The answer? You don’t need cartridges anymore! You can upload your own images and make just about anything you want. I make my own Harry Potter stuff all the time from my own images. It is really easy, here’s how to do it.

Hit the green new project button in the right hand corner of the New Cricut Design Space.  You can either hit the images button and search for a lighting bolt that you like, and hit insert image in the bottom right corner or you can find one your like online and upload it to Cricut Design Space. For this project,  find a lighting bolt you like right click on the Lighting Bolt image below, save as and then upload it to Cricut Design Space by hitting the upload button (bottom button on the left hand side).  The following screen will pop up, hit the upload image button.

You can either drag and drop your file on the next screen or search for it on your computer.

Select what kind of image it is. This lighting bolt is a Simple Image.

Erase any parts of the image you don’t want in the cut image and then insert it into your art board. Voila! You have your own design, no cartridges needed!

 

Cut the lighting bolts out of black vinyl, peel them off of the backing and then stick them on your box to add another level of Harry Potter geekdom to your vacation memories.

Once your memory box is finished fill it with ticket stubs, park maps, photos and anything else you brought home from your trip. This trip is one of the first trips we have taken where not everything I brought home fit in the box, but honestly? I bought full wizard robes, I couldn’t expect them to fit.

Have you been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? What did you bring home with you?