Home made photo magnent tutorial

I made these photo magnets as part of a gift basket we gave at Christmas, but they make for an easy DIY craft at any time of year.  

You will need:

magnets you want to re-purpose (you could buy new, blank ones but I went for the free stuff and used a handful of large magnets with local emergency info and business ads on them)

black acrylic paint

Modge Podge 

brushes

photos

your children's artwork

First, I painted the magnets with black acrylic paint.  It only took one coat for me.

I cut my magnets into fourths but you could cut them to any style.  These magnets were extremely easy to cut and I probably could have used a fancy scrapbook scissor to scallop the edges if I wanted. 

I had the kids make some smear art.  I gave them card stock and dabbled paint on it and let them smear away.  I did stifle their creativity by selecting the colors for each page myself so they were complimentary.  But, the kids did a wonderful job poking and swishing around with their hands and fingers and even a couple small brushes.  I love how they look!

I traced the cut magnet pieces onto the painted card stock.

I used fancy scrapbook scissors to cut out my tracings.  I made sure to cut inside the line I traced so these cut-outs are slightly smaller than the size of the magnet. 

Prior to this craft, I had taken photos of the kids with my own camera and had them developed at our local drugstore into mini-wallet sizes.  I cut those photos out.  Then, I made a template slightly smaller than the size of the photo.  You can see in this picture that the yellow template is a bit smaller than the white photo behind it.

I traced the template on to the fancy square of my kid art I had already cut out.  This is going to make a little frame for the photos.

I cut the middle of the frame out - the template I had traced.

Now there are three pieces of the magnet to assemble:
the cut-out magnet square
the photo
the card stock frame made from kid art

I put double-stick tape (left over from putting plastic on the windows) on the back of the photo and frame.  This really helped hold it in place when I applied the Modge Podge. 

On each magnet I taped the photo first, then the frame on top of it.  I placed them all on waxed paper and got ready to Modge Podge.

When I applied the Modge Podge, it looked really milky and thick, but it dried clear and lovely!

I made these photo magnets assembly-line style and it didn't take long at all.  They are not exactly high-quality, store-bought items but I think they look great!  It made for a wonderful Christmas gift, especially with the incorporation of the kids' own artwork.

These could easily be done with stickers or other cut-outs for decoration.  They would be very easy to personalize.  You could also forgo the photo completely and do just kid art magnets!

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