In this Instructable, we will be making Harry Potter House Badges. There is a variety of different ways to make these, varying in difficulty and material. For the most part however, house badges are made from either metal or fabric. This Instructable will teach you how to make a fabric-looking house badge for little or no cost at all. This method also accommodates any experience level or time constraint, taking as little as five minutes to an hour to make. Today we will be showing you 2 main styles of badge all from the same material but each badge takes a different amount of time and skill to make.

Note- The second picture is an example of the official badge we are modeling after and is not a badge I personally made.

Step 1: Materials

All you need to make these badges is:
Gluestick
Scissors
Paint
Sharpie
Old swimming ribbons ( Red yellow green and blue)- If you have ever been involved in swim team, you probably have millions of these laying around- If you don’t, then just ask a friend who swims or buy some online.

Step 2: Design the Badge

So as mentioned earlier there are 2 different designs we are going to show you today but the possibilities are endless. Just using the ribbon as a backing you can design the badge any way you want a still get an authentic fabric feel. Also mentioned earlier, this is where the skill level and time constraints come in. The following steps will take you through the designs I personally used, starting from the cheapest and easiest to the hardest.

Step 3: Method 1

This badge is great for parties and/or as a last minute resort. All you need to do is cut the bottom of the ribbon off (make sure the ribbon is the right color for the house you want to make it for) and paste a color, cut out picture of the house badge printed off online. This takes no artistic skill and no time to make, but the result actually looks decent, especially considering the lack of effort or time this requires.

Note: The badge I took a picture of for this step is not printed in color, though I would strongly suggest doing so for a better look.

Step 4: Method 2

So the other way of making these badges is pretty much to pull up a picture online of the house badge you want to emulate and using paint, sharpie, and the different colored ribbons, scrap it together. This is how I made the one on the first page, and I chose not to do a detailed step by step (though I could still do one if requested) on how to make it because all I did was simply use the scraps from the other ribbons and paint and sharpie it following the design of the official house badge. I made it in about a half an hour and am pretty please with how it turned out, considering my personal lack of art skill.

Step 5: Wear and Display

Once you have finished your badge you can either wear it or display it. Careful, though these make great badges for a onetime event or just to display, the holes where you push a safety pin through the material are very visible so just keep that in mind.