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Cautionary Tales For Children
Wonderful witty poems great for reading to your children. The stories and rhymes will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
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Research has shown how important YOU are to your children and how as a dad the things you do, and keep on doing, really count, whether you live with them, or you are a single dad and are only able see them once a month, once a week or more, what you do really matters. This site is dedicated to all dads but will be of special relevance to the single dad. Remember, you are half the reason your children exist and they need you whether you live with them or not. As their dad, you have what it takes to make their lives successful and fulfilling no matter how often you see them. This site is about all the positive things that we as parents have to offer our children.
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Wand Box
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Learn the skills of a master wandbox maker so you can protect and display your wand properly
Much has been said in the wizarding press and in almost any authoritative textbook you care to mention, of the importance of a choosing your wand carefully. It can not be denied that the wand maker's craft is an exacting one, but what is so often overlooked is the art of the wandbox maker.
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In order for it to perform its duties, the wand box must be made to exacting dimensions, because nothing but the best boxes are capable of both containing and maintaining a wand's magic in it's most potent state.
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Since ancient times the wandbox maker's craft has been a tradition passed down through the great wandbox making families and of course has given rise over the years, to the surnames of Boxworth and Boxford, still common in parts of the country known throughout the wizarding community to be centres of wandbox making excellence. It is a trade that can be heartily recommended, even to those not bought up amongst the deep, dark rich materials of enchanted board, fabric and assorted agglutinants or the well worn boxmaker's tools of point, perch and plate.
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All students of wandbox making must serve an apprenticeship that begins the day they make their first elementary wand box. If you have made a wand (and we have a fabulous project for doing exactly that, here) and would like to present it and keep it safe when it is not in use then this project will be perfect for you and your first step towards becoming a master wandbox maker.
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The first stage of wandbox making is gathering the dimensions and calculating the box size for the best fit. Experienced wandbox makers can do this in their heads, but by convention they always complete a wandbox specification form. Traditionally this is calculated magically. The wandbox maker fills in the known dimensions of wand length and box card thickness and then the form does the rest, but as an apprentice you will be required to do this manually. Swish and Flick, purveyours of the finest wands and wizarding paraphenalia have kindly provided their standard box specification form (that's the one you can see here) as a downloadable printable (see below).
The wandbox is typically made from enchanted cardboard of between 2mm to 5mm in thickness. Tradition requires that the box is covered with a thin, but good quality paper (or for exceptionally expensive wands, silk fabric), and that the base and lid of the wandbox be covered in contrasting colours. In the example shown here, Swish and Flick have used their preferred combination of silver and black, although of course, as the wandbox maker, you may use your taste and judgment to choose any suitable colours. Specialty papers exist for covering board, but any thin paper will do, even gift wrapping paper has been known to be used when the occasion demanded it. All you need to do is download the Box Specification Form (cut it out) and together with the instructions downloadable you will have all the information you need, to fill in the form and begin making the most fabulous wandbox. You see that Swish and Flick have even provided one of their labels which we supply here as part of the download so that you can really finish off your wandbox in the most professional way.
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Your full, easy to follow wandbox instructions are available in both A4 and US Letter format PDFs and can be easily downloaded by just clicking on size you want.
Swish and Flick wandbox specification form
 
Swish and Flick wandbox instructions and labels
 
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Posted by tuskel - I wanted to make Ollivander's wand box, so I found a different label. However, I used your calculations. The box itself is made of the sides of a big corn flakes box, covered with black wrapping paper and brown parcel paper. Inside I glued layers of felt, left an indentation for the wand and covered it with silk from an old shirt. I found it very hard to cut the half circles with scissors, having lost my craft knife. The black paper was scratched, so I covered the edges of the circles with silver marker. It has been heavily used over a week, and the wear is visible on the picture. :)
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Posted by nepenthe - It took me awhile to do the maths, but was happy with the results! I lined the box with gray felt, which I padded underneath with several layers of quilt liner that I was able to make a depression in for the wand to be nestled in.
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Posted by jacjan - We made an Ollivander's label for our boxes.
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Posted by scintnl - We did not do these boxes from scratck. We took standard necktie boxes and reinforced their walls (and gave them more height) by glueing strips of corrugated cardboard. We also lined the lids with some white silk-looking fabric and padded the bottom of the box with plastic bubble wrap
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Posted by yoyomax12 - After you get over your math anxiety for calculating the dimensions, this box turned out perfectly!
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Posted by spoffk - I made the box so it looked like it was from Ollivander's wand shop (I used Photoshop on the labels). For the wand I used the wand pattern on this site.
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Posted by potatojesus - A wand box with matching envelope.
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Posted by albuehler - The instructions called for use of cardboard. I had many scraps of 1" X 2" and 1"x4" lumber laying around from my model railroad table. I decided to put them to use and build a slightly sturdier box. The chain is an old necklace.The hinges and hasp are from an old jewlery box. The fabric is a scrap I picked up at a local fabric shop for 50 cents (USD). The wand is a carved and whittled down dowl that was laying around. Thanks for the great ideas on what these things look like ! Sorry; Harrry Potter isn't one of my strong points of knowledge.
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Posted by jolovesvlad - This came out great! The only thing I did differently was to make the inside padded. It will be a worthy part of the Christmas gift. Thanks for project!
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Posted by mimbulus - This is my wand box, including the wand of course. I've create my own logo for the box..
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Posted by t2 - SWEET...
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Posted by dimps - Heres the wands im making boxes for. Pics will follow
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Posted by fzxguy - What an amazing website! Your instructions are wonderful and easy to follow. I have almost no craft experience and was able to make this great looking wand and box in a couple of hours. Thanks!
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Wizardry and Magic
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Harry Potter is all done. Of course there are rumours of an eighth book and the fact that we still have two films to go (as the last film will be split into two). It's going to be a long summer, but November will come round soon enough and the bitter sweet joy of seeing another HP film will be tempered by the fact that there is definitely only one more after that. Nevertheless, while you wait, there’s always more than enough magic in the air for you to recreate events at Hogwarts, the Burrow or the Ministry of Magic, by making your own models of Hogwarts wizarding paraphernalia.

Homemade wizard’s wands, Golden Snitches, or beautiful writing quills and loads of other Potteresk things are all here, ready for you to download on dadcando.
 Even if you’re just a muggle and have had enough of Harry Potter, there are plenty of other magical fantasy stories to keep you interested in the Magical Art of Making. All the Chronicles of Narnia are all being turned into films, as are the stories of Lyra in the books of His Dark Materials trilogy. Whenever we see interesting things in these films and stories, we will bring you them as best magical fantasy craft projects, so that you can turn your hand to making magic, and conjuring up some really cool stuff to amaze your friends.
 Now you can make your very own Victorian Domed glass display case, from a 2 litre soda bottle, to display all your favourite projects and artifacts really beautifully. With our simple instructions, the results of just an afternoon's making will be really cool, good enough to be film props in fact, and better than anything you can buy, because you made it yourself.
Or why not make a beautiful writing quill from either a hippogryph, phoenix or snowy owl feather . And because no quill would be complete without its own ink pot, there are also some easy to follow instructions and printables, for making the most fantastical, magical Ink-pots.
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