My Harry Potter Wizards' Chess Set Makeover

It's done!

This may be one of my most labor-intensive projects yet, which is silly when you consider all I set out to do was re-paint a plastic chess set:

This set was produced over ten years ago, but you can still find used ones on ebay in the $30 range. I initially bought mine to turn into ornaments for our Harry Potter tree, but decided to instead spiff it up for year-round display in our steampunk room.

I debated matching the set in Sorcerer's Stone, but since they already sell a high-end version in a more realistic stone finish, I decided to go with a wholly unique gold-and-silver scheme.

So just a few blasts of spray paint, right? 

Er... as it turned out, not so much.

Here's what it took:

First I filled the hollow horse bodies with aluminum foil & epoxy putty:

I also used epoxy putty to inset lead fishing weights into the hollow bottoms of ALL the pieces:

This gives them a delightful heft, and helps sell the metal illusion.

Smoothing out the epoxied bottoms:

Next, a solid week of testing different primers before FINALLY finding one that sticks to the rubbery sections of the pieces:

The winning primer was a shellac-based spray called BIN, btw. Even that isn't perfect, though; it's so rigid that the slightly-flexible horse legs and maces have already flaked a little.  >.<

At this stage I realized both Kings were doing a funky Michael Jackson lean:

So I paused while John did some tedious surgery to fix them.
He had to pry them off the base, shave down the heels, and then re-epoxy them in place.

Next, many, MANY passes of the metallic gold and silver base coats:

"WITNESS ME!!"

Every time I thought I was done, I'd find another nook or cranny I missed. I had to keep the coats light, to avoid filling in all that fabulous detail.

But here's where it gets tedious. 

(Yes, it's only NOW getting tedious. Ha!)

Next I used a teensy-tiny brush to apply contrasting liquid leaf in certain areas. Really helps bring out some of the detail, right?

The hand-painting was SUPER fun... for about the first 8 pieces. The whole set took me about 4 evenings to paint, and I was extremely ready to be done by the end. Urg.

Starting to look like metal?

I paused here for a good week or two, because the next step was kind of painful. I mean, look at that beautiful shine!

Still, I was convinced it needed aging to bring out the rest of the detail, so eventually:

Here we go: I painted small sections with raw umber acrylic paint, then quickly wiped it off again with a damp rag. Not quite as tedious as the hand-painting, but close.

A before-and-after with the two gold Knights:

I do like shiny, but I love the aged one. It just looks more substantial.

Now, pretty photoshoot time!

Check out those glorious horse bellies: would you ever guess that's epoxy putty?
(Yeah, I'm bragging. GIVE ME THIS MOMENT.)

As-is, the plastic set hides a TON of impressive detail. Just look at the difference:

From this...

To this!

Ah, I forgot to mention: I finished the set by gluing black felt bottoms to all the pieces. Which was tricky, since the bases are imperfect octagons.

I may have gotten carried away with this photo shoot and taken about 100 shots.

I, uh, promise not to include them all here, though.

Size reference:


I really love how heavy they are with those embedded lead weights. 











You may have noticed I don't have a chess board yet.

I'm debating between just buying one and making one, and also which color scheme to go with. Plus I'm talking with John about making a wall-mounted display, which I think would be pretty sweet. (Maybe with a mirrored backing? OoooOOOOooh.)

And that's my Harry Potter chess set! 

Hope you guys enjoyed the eye candy!