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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