Devon spent months printing and painting this Fallout-inspired Red Rocket scene. You know it was worth it because I complained only once about how much space it took up in our shared workspace.
Get the files from Modiphius. Devon used other files available on Modiphius to flesh it out, and he plans to add a few more car wrecks.
Our much-loved 22-year-old cat died this week. Our kids wanted something to remember her by, so I made necklaces for me and the kids. Devon’s not a jewelry person except for his wedding band, so he got a magnet.
I’ve made dozens of necklaces like this using — you guessed it — art from Dragon magazine, and the process here was the same. You could skip the resin and coat it with a matte or gloss sealer if you prefer. Check out our blog entry on making magnets for more complete directions. Instead of magnet backings, you’ll need bails and cords.
An image of a dagger printed on a magazine-page background.
Someday I’ll run out of things to do with our old Dragon magazines, but today is not that day.
I needed something to do with the pages of plain text, so I made my own version of the vintage dictionary art I’ve seen on Pinterest. This project is simple unless, like me, you make things more complicated than they need to be.
First decide what size you want your finished art to be. I suggest using a standard frame size so you don’t have to buy a custom frame, but I ain’t the boss of you. Mine are all 5 x 7.
Choose or create an image you like. I wanted a dagger, but I can’t draw, so I took a picture of my dagger and played with it in Silhouette Studio. The original photo had too much light on the hilt, which is why it appears to be dissolving, but I consider it a happy accident. I played around with different looks — thicker, more uneven lines around the dagger, more 3-dimensionality on the blade, etc. There’s no way to do this wrong. In some versions, I stenciled a background design before sending it to the printer.
In hindsight, it might have been faster to learn how to draw a dagger, but I prefer to overthink things.
Gently rip or cut the page from your magazine. I taped my pages to 8.5 x 11 pieces of copy paper so I didn’t have to fiddle with custom sizes and taped them to the bottom left every time for consistent print results.
Now put that paper aside and do a few test runs on scrap before you use your favorite page from a magazine that can’t be replaced. If you adore the page you’re using, you might want to photocopy or scan it, just in case.
Print the image on plain paper. Place the print over your prepared page. Make sure you like the positioning. Then print it again with a scrap page from the same publication so you can see precisely how things line up and how your color prints. Even dark colors should print lightly enough to see the text underneath. Make any necessary adjustments, then print on your final page.
Now cut your piece a bit bigger than the window of your frame or mat. I taped it to cardstock before framing it to mask the other side. Your final size doesn’t need to be precise: It just needs to fit inside the frame, lined up properly in the window.
You can go in a lot of different directions with this: stamping, stencils, freehand drawing, painting, etc. I dove deeper into my craft supplies once I nailed down the process.
Choose to shine. Or don’t. No pressure.
The last Maker Monday featured fridge magnets made from old Dragon magazine art. For this project, I paired larger pieces with sentimental and motivational phrases from my scrapbooking stash.
Your basic supplies will be old print materials (magazines, newspapers, junk mail, etc.), adhesive-backed magnetic sheets and stickers with phrases you like. I used Tim Holtz’s Small Talk. You could also print your own.
The magnet in the picture above is about the size of a playing card. Don’t go much smaller than that if you want it to work for a living, since the magnetic backing is thin.
I adhered the art to regular cardstock (any color) using double-sided tape. This step makes the magnets feel sturdier and lets me craft them up before committing to the magnetic backing. I’m more willing to experiment when I’m not risking the single most expensive element of a project, but it’s fine to skip this step if you’re more confident than I am.
I covered my magnets with a thin layer of matte gel, then aged them with Distress Oxide inks (Antique Linen and Vintage Photo). On some, I added a layer of crackle paint for more texture. There’s a small learning curve with crackle paint, so test drive it on scrap paper if you haven’t used it before. For magnets that called for a crisper image, I used nothing but a clear gloss spray varnish to prevent brush strokes.
I coated a few with resin, but it’s not worth the trouble. The resin warped the thin backing, and even with a lot of effort, I couldn’t get them perfectly straight again. I might be able to solve this problem in time, but I probably won’t bother. You could laminate them if you plan to take them to the beach for some reason, but a finishing coat of varnish or decoupage medium will work just fine for ordinary use.
These are fun to make — so much fun that I’ve run out of room on the fridge and I’m now cannibalizing the dishwasher.
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These fridge magnets are made primarily from wood scraps, old Dragon magazines, and environmental angst.
A few years ago, Devon gifted me his dead-tree collection of Dragon magazines. I had no idea what to do with so much awesome, so I did the only reasonable thing: I shoved them into a dark corner and moved on.
Fast forward to a few months ago, when I was feeling bad about the trash we generate with our hobbies. We try to be environmentally conscious, but there’s no denying that a lot of stuff ends up in a landfill. In this case, I was throwing shade at the drawers full of tiny wood circles, squares and rectangles Devon amassed while he was cutting his painting racks on our Glowforge. Even he felt bad, which is why they ended up in drawers instead of the trash.
That was the moment I realized I needed — NEEDED! — magnets made from Dragon art.
For basic magnets, all you need is a sturdy base — in this case, wood — art, adhesive and a magnet. I used strong ceramic magnets applied with E6000 adhesive because magnets that make STR a dump stat are the worst.
I aged some of them with Distress Oxide Inks and Deco Art One Step Crackle, which gives the magnets a nice rough texture that’s hard to see in the above picture. With others, I applied hard UV resin to create a glass-like finish.
I went a little extra with Golden Soft Gel Matte to soften the paper’s glossiness, and I used spray varnish to seal the pieces without leaving brush strokes. If you use spray, do so in a well-ventilated area, preferably with a good respirator.
Resin will yellow the paper over time, so varnish the pieces unless you want that look. I varnished all of the magnets, even the ones I distressed, to give myself control over the aging process.
I used the same basic process to make a mountain of magnets, earrings, pins, pendants and buttons, which will be the subject of future Maker Mondays.
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