Harry Potter Birthday Party - The Scrap Shoppe

Get inspired to throw a magical wizard party by this Harry Potter birthday party complete with a Hogwarts-inspired book cake and party decor!

Don’t miss our:
Harry Potter Wand Shop
Sorting Hat Dogs
DIY Backyard Quidditch
Harry Potter Birthday Invitation
Harry Potter Potions Class – Part 1
Harry Potter Potions Class – Part 2

So I think we’re on part 4 of sharing our Harry Potter birthday party.

There was just so much that one post would be so overwhelming!

Be sure to check our:

Harry Potter Birthday Party Invitation

Harry Potter Wand Shop & FREE Printables

Harry Potter Sorting Hat Dogs Recipe

And today it’s all about the Hogwarts-inspired book cake and some of the store bought and handmade decoration ideas!

But, like I’ve said before, I did not get a lot of good photos during the party (too much fun being had!).

But I’m sharing some pics I was able to take later, and, luckily, I did get photos of the my son blowing out his birthday cake!

Harry Potter Birthday Party: Wand Shop

I shared this photo with the Wand Shop post, but since it contains a lot of the decor I wanted to share it again here.

Can I just say that brick background is AMAZING!

It really made the space for the wand shop!

Resources (affiliate links): Brick Background, Stone Tablecloth

Harry Potter Birthday Party: Potions Class

We also had a potions class, which I broke into 2 posts because we did so much!

You can find out more at Potions Class Part 1 and Potions Class Part 2.

It was almost as much fun as making the wands!

We did several potions including a potion that sorted the kids into the Hogwarts houses.

They REALLY loved that one!

Can I just say that “slime” makes for great potions?

That’s what is in all the test tubes! (Test tube rack found at Michael’s.)

But more on that in the potions post (coming soon).

I’ll also share about making that life-size Professor Snape soon.

Harry Potter Birthday Party: Quidditch

I made some cute Golden Snitches to decorate the DIY Quidditch field.

I just cut out wings from white cardstock and hot glued them to gold paper lanterns (affiliate link).

To make the wings stand out away from the lanterns I glued popsicle sticks to the back of them.

Harry Potter Birthday Party: Decorations

In the “great hall” where we had the food table I hung LED taper candles (affiliate link).

I strongly contemplated collecting paper towels rolls to make my own taper candles, but these ended up being just over $1 each which seemed well worth the purchase.

I hung them from our dining room light with fishing line.

I found this awesome Daily Prophet fabric at JoAnn’s and cut it up to make some fun bunting.

It made for a great backdrop for the gift table.

Harry Potter Birthday Party: Hogwarts-Inspired Book Cake

Now for the Hogwarts-inspired cake!

I used my favorite chocolate pound cake recipe and buttercream recipe.

I love using pound cake because I know the cake will hold up without much need for extra support.

The book covers are made from Wilton’s brown fondant (affiliate link) which is chocolate flavored and surprisingly tasty for fondant!

It’s also super simple to use.

It did take 2 boxes for this cake.

It took three rectangular cakes to make the books.

The bottom layer is two full sheets of cake stacked to make 2 layers, and the top is one cake cut in half and stacked to make 2 layers.

I iced the entire bottom layer, let it set up in the fridge, then rolled out the fondant, cut it to size, and placed it on the top and one long side of the cake.

I cut strips of the fondant to place along all of the other bottom edges of the cake to look like the cover on the bottom of the book.

I also cut two small rectangles of fondant for the spine and attached it by wetting the back side of the fondant with water.

I used extra buttercream to pipe out the name of the book.

I repeated the process with the smaller book.

And, because of the denseness of the pound cake, I didn’t need to use dowel rods to support the second layer of the cake.

I managed to make the buttercream edges look like book pages by repeatedly pressing a pair of 5-blade herb scissors (affiliate link) into the icing while it was nice and cold.

It worked perfectly!

I used some gold cake dust to dress up parts of the cake.

The gold cake dust could be mixed with water and used as paint so I added it to the strips on the spine, the book titles, and the HP logo I hand cut out of some extra fondant.

I also added streaks of the gold to the book pages to give them an aged look.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to create and cut out a fun Harry Potter cake topper!

The black is black cardstock that I cut twice and glued together to make 2 layers thick for durability.

The sorting hat, lighting bolt, owl, snitch, Quidditch player, and wand are decorated with an extra layer of adhesive vinyl.

To use it on the cake I glued a skewer to the back of it.

The other items on top of the cake are a miniature sorting hat that actually talks (affiliate link) and a small “wand” made from a chocolate covered pretzel.

I also wanted to show off the “suitcase” I made for the cake to sit on.

I wanted a real vintage-style suitcase but couldn’t find one for a reasonable price so I created on out of a box and some accessories I found at Hobby Lobby.

I’m obsessed with how the entire cake turned out!

I’m obviously no cake expert and the cake has it’s issues, but since the books are suppose to look older, my lack of ability actually worked more for me than against me.

Not like that will happen very often, right???

I hope you are inspired by this Harry Potter books cake & party decor.