I always loved Harry Potter and I felt great dishonor when my letter from Hogwarts did not come. Since then I got over the fact that I wont be studying at the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry so at least I made this sign for my (Pottermore approved) house.

Materials: wood (I wanted to use a walnut but instead I used pine and dark stain), red and yellow satin, pushpins.

Tools: jigsaw, japanese saw, scroll saw, beltsander, sandpapers, hammer, drill and trill bit (size of a jig saw blade).

Step 1: The Frame & the Lion

I started by cutting the rough shape of the frame with my jigsaw. I cut the inner part out by first drilling holes in corners to allow me to use a jigsaw. Then I finished the shape on the beltsaw first with P60 grit for faster removal of materials, then P120 grit for nice and clean surface. Lastly I rounded the top edges with sandpaper.

For the lion I used cut off from the frame. I precisely draw the shape of the lion and started cutting. First I used japanese saw to remove bigger pieces of material but for details such as the mouth with teeth or legs I used scroll saw. The scroll saw is not very fast, but I was able to follow the lines very accurately. I had to be really careful, especially with the tail, since it is very thin and I was affraid, that it´s going to break with every stroke of the saw. Luckily everything went well, so the only thing I had to do after the sawing was to sand the rough surfaces and round over the edges with sandpaper.

Finally I coated the wooden parts with my favourite wood stain to add nice look. Again, I initially intended to use walnut for this, but I didn´t have any so I used pine with stain instead.

Step 2: Background

I started by cutting plywood to match inner contour of the frame. Then I split it to quarters, again, with my jigsaw. Next I coated these four pieces with red and yellow satin. When I was looking for materials for this project, I wanted something noble looking and satin was the right choice for me. The red is really beatiful and the yellow looks almost like gold. So I attached these fine fabrics to plywood pieces using pushpins with wide heads and hammer to secure them in their place.

After all of this was done I just hot glued all the pieces together.

Step 3: Afterthoughts

I love this project a lot, it wasn´t very hard to make and it´s nice addition to my room. I would love to see some other house signs, so if you make one, please let me know :-)