This post contains affiliate links. Updated June 2022
An excellent Hogwarts letter is the key piece of a Harry Potter surprise treasure box. I knew I wanted to do it up, to make a really cool replica compared to the movie props, so I searched high and low to find the best projects, and I compiled them into a single place here.
This post will link the places I've used for inspiration, and then how we made changes or revisions to make it our own.
Supplies for all parts
- Color printer
- Parchment-style paper (optional)
- Glue stick
- Scissors / paper trimmer
- Silhouette digital cutter (optional)
- Hot glue sticks
- FIMO modeling clay (any color)
- Piece of red crayon
- Exacto knife
The Hogwarts letter
First things first, the actual Harry Potter Hogwarts letter. I used the original words from the book as my guideline but edited it to include the Orlando locale and the dates of our trip. I've got two versions of the letter for you to choose from; the white background is great if you have a parchment-style paper to print on, and a tea-stained paper version, which can be printed on plain white paper and still have the look. (Both files will open Google Drive in a new tab)
The blue box shown above doesn't print, but you can easily edit that text to make the letter say just what you want. (Before you download the PDF, be sure to install the Harry Potter font.)
The Hogwarts Envelope
I have to confess, this one had some challenges. I ended up printing the address and Hogwarts seal and then using my Silhouette digital cutter to cut it out. Download the 4 Privet Drive font from here for the PERFECT look to your address! The steps here are a little more complicated, but hopefully, this will take you through them easily.
There are two versions of the Harry Potter envelope template you can choose from: White background for parchment-style paper, or with the preset tea-stained look to print on white paper. (These links will open Google Drive in a new tab)
- Open the envelope template PDF in Word.
- Use the 4 Privet Drive font to type in your recipient's address.
- Rotate the text 45° (Here's how, if you need it)
- Center the address on what will become the front of the envelope when folded.
- If you're using the tea-stained PDF, print the second page of the file to get the colored back on your paper, so it shows on the inside of the envelope.
- Once your envelope is printed out, carefully cut along the lines, or I've got an SVG file here for the envelope outline, so you can use this to cut it out on your Silhouette!
- Crease and then glue the envelope and you're done!
Hogwarts Seal
I stumbled upon this blog post and loved his attention to detail. (He's even the one who designed the Privet Drive font!) We were really inspired by his Harry Potter wax seal tutorial, so read there for all the details, but we made some changes.
- Our stamp is molded from a larger piece of FIMO, instead of using the coin backing.
- Once it was baked, Jamie sanded the face of the stamp to smooth it out and then used the Exacto knife to clean up the edges.
- Instead of painting the glue seals, we found that melting about 1 part red crayon to 3 parts hot glue made exactly the look we were going for. Our experiments are as follows: Top left: Painted (acrylic craft paint) hot glue, Top right: Red crayon and hot glue, Bottom left: Magenta crayon and hot glue, Bottom right (the winner): Combo of Red and Magenta crayon with hot glue.
- Melt a piece of hot glue stick and red crayon together and then apply to the stamp, no glue gun needed!
Want to see more of what went into the treasure box? There were a load of goodies in there, including Dementor Attack chocolate bars, a Harry Potter spell book, and assorted Harry Potter candy.
The box was the culmination of a Harry Potter Scavenger Hunt, which included several DIY projects like Neville's Remembrall and Professor Trelawney's Prophecy Ball.
<<— Return to Treasure Box overview post
Help! The Hogwarts letter on white has a different file name from the parchment one but they are both the same pdf.
Hi Mary! Thanks so much for the heads up! I’ve fixed the link, and will email you separately as well.
Can you please email it to me too ..
Can You please email it to me too?
Thank you so much! This was great! I did find myself wishing you went over how to fold the letter to fit in the envelope! ?
Hi Nell! I actually printed the letter scaled down to about 75% so I could just fold it in half for my purposes.
Love this envelope! How did you melt the glue and crayon together?
HELP
I cannot seem to use the letter as it saves as a PDF I cannot edit. Also both letters come up white.
PLEASE HELP
Hi Kristen! Thanks for stopping by! It looks like my links got screwy for the tea-stained version, I’ve updated the link, and I’ll paste it below as well.
As for filling the PDF, make sure you’re saving it to your computer and opening it in Adobe Reader, not in your browser.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwJpadlsrUhLaGJwcjRTREEzOU0/view?usp=sharing
Hey, I would absolutely love to download and print the documents you provide, but cannot seem to access the dropbox 🙁 is something wrong?
Hey Elmarie,
I’m sorry you’re having trouble… the links go through to Google Drive files, and all looks like it should be working from my end.
Let me know if you’d like me to email the files directly!
Everything is working out great except for when I print it out it cuts part of the letter off after “at” and that follows all the way down like somebody chopped it off. I hope I’m explaining it right.
Hi Evamarie!
Are you seeing the whole letter on your screen? It sounds like maybe your printer setup is going the wrong orientation.
Hey the editing text in adobe reader is not in Harry Potter font despite installing the Harry Potter font…. what do I do?
Pooja – I had a similar issue. I suspect it’s because it’s the free version of Adobe that I have installed. I ended up just copying the text into word and editing the font from there instead. I had to print onto parchment though.
Thank you so much for posting this information! We are visiting HP Studios this weekend so I wanted to send a ‘prospective students’ invite to my kids. They are 9 & 7 so are not technically old enough to go to school there 🙂 I couldn’t get the font to work in Adobe so I copied some of the text and pictures into word and used the font there instead and printed on parchment. The font was awesome! I printed the envelope on A3 paper and the letter on A4 paper and that helped it fit. I also included a ticket for the Hogwarts Express and the Knight Bus in the envelope which also went down really well with them! Thanks again!
help!
i couldn’t find the link to download the pdf
Did you ever find it? I am still looking.
Thanks for the awesome instructions. We made our own version. Here’s a making of video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qk86GmKPqk
Where is the link for the white background letter?
Hi, are These files still available? For some reason they won’t open in my Google documents,
it says they won’t convert?
could you make it more clear on how to open it up in word.
Hi. Is there a printable version (white background) with the Harry Potter address already on it? I don’t want to customize just make them to decorate with his address.
Thank you,,
This is fantastic! Got the letter all set with the fonts. Very simple instructions, thank you!
I am however stuck with the envelope. I have downloaded the PDF, have got the addresses ready in a text box at 45 degrees on Word but that’s as far as I can get! I’m stuck trying to add the text box to the PDF as I don’t have the ability to do that. Am I missing something?
Love the PDF..thank you! The body of the letter is not printing in the same font. I was also modifying the text and was wondering if there is a way to modify the font and text size so I can fit everything?
hello! it looks great, but i cant open the file onto adobe reader and i cant edit and cant figure out what to do lol!
can you email me the file or something? sorry!! absolutely love the letter
I’m taking my kids to HP world in Orlando next month. Do you have an example for the wording you used? Thank you for sharing all of this!!
greatest HP item I have ever seen, however, like a lot of prople, I can not get it to open. Can you assist?
My WORD will not open the PDF except to show a lot of programming text… not the actual letter. How can I fix that so I can edit it?
Hi Herb,
You’ll want to use Acrobat Reader, not Word.
I cannot get this to work. Can you please email me directly?
Is there a PDF envelope the Harry Potter address already on, in case we don’t want to customize?
Hello,
I am trying to download the Harry Potter font, but I am not sure how to use it on the letter.
Any help would be very appreciated!
-Miranda
Hello, we were able to edit the white background letter with the harry potter font we downloaded, but when we print it, it doesn’t print the edited portion in the font. Thanks in advance for your help.
Hi Lizz, this is a great project, but I just can’t get it to work. We’re doing a Harry Potter Christmas this year and wanted to use the envelopes to decorate the tree. Converting to word, I can get the paper for the envelope without the envelope template. I could print the template for the envelope separately to cut it out, but the font won’t allow me to rotate by 45 degrees for the address. Is it possible to post a printable file of the envelope including the address?
Thank you for all the wonderful ideas, templates and help you offered me to organize a fantastic Harry Potter birthday party for our son. I wish I could show you the smile on his face when he opened his Hogwarts letter. THANK YOU, THANK YOU.
I was just about to start creating these letters and envelopes for my twin Granddaughters but thanks to coming across your wonderful instructions and pdfs it’s saved me an awful amount of time. Your instructions all worked perfectly although I am yet to print them out. Thank you for a great how-to guide.
Great job! Thank you!
Great templates thank you! I came across a few hurdles on the way. First I had an issue printing the Dear Harry Potter font from word, the lovely curly letter bottoms were cut off no matter how I formatted it. Going back to the original creator the issue seems to be that the font is not word compatible and you need to open the font in InDesign which I don’t have. I couldn’t find anything I preferred so decided to live with it. I printed the envelopes in A4 and they were too small for A4 letters so I trimmed the letters up with a craft knife – 12mm off each of the long sides and 10mm off the bottom – and they fitted beautifully. They also look more authentic I feel, I doubt witches and wizards use A4! I have also just printed and stuck together the Marauders Map and it looks amazing! Super resource.
I’ve just used all of your wonderful instructions and resources to create a personalised letter & envelope to top my daughter’s Harry Potter birthday cake. Thankyou *so* much!
AWSOME! Many thanks. 11th Birthday tomorrow. You saved the Day!! All done in just about 10 mins! Brilliant.
Thank you!! I printed on regular paper (reduced the print size), cut it out and lightly burned the edges of the letter. It came out so cute! I didn’t do the stamp or envelope, but I’m bookmarking it for another time.
Hi, so i download the parchment one and when i opened it, it doesent have the font that you have on yours can someone pls help me about that?
Hey I can’t seem to find the link to download the pdf in parchment. Please can anyone just share me the link to download the pdf ?
where are the links for the letter and the envelope?
Thank you so much for this!
Can you please email me the link so that i can print out the letter?
The Tea Stained acceptance letter won’t open in google drive like the others, it takes me to a google sign in screen.
can you please email it to me? Thanks so much!
Hi! I cannot open the files with google drive…anyway to send the pdf directly to me email? I would be ever so happy to use these for my son’s birthday party!! Thanks in advance!
Sincerely,
Rhiannon