A local movie house hosted a spectacular event called 24 Hours of Harry Potter back in February.  The theater, Row House Cinema, is located in the Lawrenceville section of Pittsburgh, which is a bit of a hipsterish part of the city.  My friends, Connie and Trisha, decided to go and we thankfully snatched up tickets quick, because they sold out.  The theater was playing all of the Harry Potter movies over a 24-hour period starting at midnight on a Friday night and running to midnight on Saturday with short breaks between the movies and a breakfast and a dinner break.

The theater did a great job with this event.  They had chair massages available during the long breaks.  There were free refills on drinks (non-alcoholic).  They had food trucks come by for our meal breaks.  They had some trivia and house sorting events between movies.  And they stamped our lanyards for each movie.  If you stayed for all twelve movies, you received a certificate.  Really, a well planned event.  So much fun.

But, besides Connie and I making our house scarves for the event, we also dressed up in our Harry Potter gear.  I dressed up like Luna Lovegood, because she is a fellow Ravenclaw, so I tried a bit of a pseudo-cosplay.  Connie dressed in her Slytherin robes with her newly made Slytherin scarf.  Trisha dd not dress up, but Connie couldn’t let that go, so she made her a muggle pin to wear and gave her some Muggle Away (hand sanitizer).

For my “cosplay” of Luna Lovegood, I had the basic elements, a blond wig, her Spectrespecs, Ravenclaw robe, wand, and scarf.  But I also had to get some props together as well.  I had my little stuffed owl, so I had a little cage for him.  My backpack had a Ravenclaw luggage tag on it.  I printed out a Quibbler issue to carry around.  But my real crafty project was my luggage (purse).  I got a small luggage purse at a craft/home store.  I wanted it to look like my luggage for going off to Hogwarts, so I tried to add some travel stickers.  Some I bought in the scrap booking section of the craft store, and some I printed out and pasted onto my luggage.  I also used sand paper to scuff up my luggage and make it look more worn and aged.  My wand wouldn’t fit in my little luggage, so I made a wand holder on the back of it.  I used some suede and leather scraps to make a little pouch to hold my wand.

So throughout the movies, Connie would hand us little Easter Eggs.  For example, during the Gringotts scene she would hand us a little cauldron filled with chocolate coins.  We got all kinds of goodies through all of the movies including:  chocolate frog, golden snitch, Polyjuice potion, Honeydukes lollipop, Dementer’s Kiss emergency candy, golden egg and dragon, liquid luck, Resurrection Stone, and Deathly Hallows.  She made the night so much more special than it already was and help fuel us with extra sugar to stay awake.  And in case you hadn’t guessed, Connie is my work friend that I compete with for Halloween decorations and costumes.

And that’s not to say that Trisha is not also very talented and creative as well.  She has also made some incredibly creative costumes.  Plus she’s a graphic designer and illustrator.  I’m pretty lucky to have creative and talented friends to spur my own creativity, and to be crazy enough to watch a 24 hour Harry otter marathon.

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