Today we’re sharing how to make sparkly magic wands for fairy costumes and pretend play. 

These wands might look fancy, but the main material we’ve used to make them is cardboard!

This easy kids craft idea was something I came up with when my girls were preschoolers. They each made a magic wand of their own with a little help from me. Because a lot of you are probably thinking about Halloween costumes, I thought this would be a good time to pull this gem out of the archives and re-share it again on the blog.

It hardly seems like yesterday when my girls were utterly enchanted by fairies. It was fairy stories, fairy costumes, fairy music and fairy crafts all the way.

Oh, and sparkles – they could never have too many sparkles!

I often found that the fairy wands I purchased from the toy store got broken too easily and simply didn’t last, so one day we decided to make some of our own.

Of course, you can imagine how much the girls adored making these. They absolutely LOVED this easy fairy craft – especially the part with the sparkles.

Here’s how to make a magic wand at home.

How to make sparkly magic wands

You will need:

• Dowel rods
• Lengths of ribbon
• Heavy cardboard (we recycled the cardboard back of a sketch pad for ours)
• Scissors
• Acrylic paint
• Craft glue
• Laundry pegs (to hold ribbon in place while drying)
• Glitter, sparkles and plastic gems to decorate
• Hot glue gun
• This Fairy Wand template

How to:

1) Print out the star template above and use it to cut out your star shapes from the heavy card. Cut out as many as you need, for a group activity it’s probably a good idea to have a pile of them already cut out & ready to go for the kids.

2) Set out a table with paints, glitter, sparkles and anything else you wish to decorate with

3) Have the kids paint &  decorate the stars

4) Whist the stars are drying, cut a long length of ribbon & use a paintbrush to paint craft glue up one side of the dowel rod. Wind the ribbon around all the way up. Trim to size and hold in place with a clothes peg at the top & bottom until the ribbon is dry.

5) Attach the star to the be-ribboned dowel rod with a hot glue gun & leave to dry.

6) Once dry, tie 2 more strands of ribbon just beneath the star & tie in a bow at the back

So pretty! Here are the wands made by the girls…

More fairy craft ideas for kids

• Here is a printable set of mini fairy letters (a great way to get in some writing practice!)
• Create a fairy castle for imaginary play from a cardboard box
• Here are some spoon fairy ornaments based on characters from The Rainbow Magic Fairy books
• Create a craft stick fairy castle with some little craft stick fairies to live in it
• Here’s an adorable flying fairy car my daughter made (mostly) on her own
• Create a fairy garden outdoors using our printable toadstools, fairy door and windows