As the first young generation of Harry Potter fans grow to adulthood, more and more ideas are flooding in about how to mix adult life with the magical cornerstone of our childhoods. Author Meredith McCardle has taken Harry Potter home decor to the next level by painting the opening paragraphs of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on the wall in her home office.
“I borrowed an overhead projector from the elementary school where my mom teaches, printed out the first two pages of Harry Potter, which I got from a free sample of the book at Scholastic’s website, onto transparent film, then projected the image onto the wall,” McCardle wrote on her blog. It took her twenty hours alone to trace the text onto the wall in pencil, a task she originally thought would take her a mere two hours. “It took me twenty minutes alone to trace ‘Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,’ after which I realized I had made a serious miscalculation and had a Come to Jesus talk with myself about whether or not to continue.”
Once the text was traced onto the wall, McCardle set to work painting over the pencil with black paint. This took another forty hours, bringing the grand total to sixty hours of work. But McCardle says it was worth it, especially considering the cost of having custom stencils or vinyl wall decals made. Doing it the old fashioned way was clearly the most affordable option. Besides, I personally think there’s something really neat about having wall art that you created yourself.
McCardle also wrote about her process of deciding to use this particular extract from the books, so full of the horrid Dursleys.
“My first instinct was to do a passage from Prisoner of Azkaban because I’m a time travel writer, so it would have been a fun little ode to a genre I love so much, but then I quickly realized that anything with dialogue does not translate well to the wall. It leaves too many blank spaces. A nagging voice kept telling me I needed to start at the beginning, on the very first page of the very first book. Where the magic begins.”
And really, despite the strictly enforced banality of the Dursley home and family, for a lot of fans there’s still a magical thrill that those opening lines bring.
You can find more details about McCardle’s project over on her blog!
Are you inspired by this feat of home design wizardry? Are there any passages from favorite novels you would want to display on your walls? Let us know in the comments!
