Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Souvenir Magnets

I've seen souvenir magnets at national parks and famous cities, but I wanted to make something a little more personal for my sister-in-laws birthday. We had gone on a trip with my family to Sedona and my husband took pictures of them while we were there. I shrunk the photos in Photoshop and cropped them down to 1"x1" squares or 1"x2" rectangles, arranged them on a 4x6 template, and printed it at Sam's Club for $0.13. I found magnet tape at Michael's Crafts for $5.99 a roll (you can always find 40% off coupons there) and I got the resin covering at an online store called Dixie Dazzle Designs on Zibbet.com (which is just like Etsy). I got 50 square tiles for $6.95 and 20 rectangle tiles for $5.95. I liked these tiles because they were self-adhesive, which saved me a couple days of waiting for mod podge to dry, and they're domed which magnifies the photographs.


To put them together, I simply:
  1. Cut out each photo
  2. Stuck each photo facing the adhesive side of the resin tiles
  3. Cut the magnet strip to the right length (the width was already 1")
  4. Stuck the adhesive side of the magnets to the backs of the photos
Because the magnetic strip is wound up when it's packaged, you may need to place some heavy books on top of your magnets to get them to flatten out. After that, they're ready to decorate your fridge. Unlike the ones you can buy at tourist information booths, no one else will have magnets quite like yours. This would also be a good bridal shower gift if you can get your hands on some engagement photos of the couple.

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