DIY Refrigerator Magnets

Today’s post is a quick and easy DIY to make custom refrigerator magnets. The MOST important part of a good magnet is the MAGNET! Through the years I've tossed dozens of cute magnets because they slid right down the refrigerator if you attempted to hold more than one scrap of paper.

I've made LOTS of magnets and I can tell you HANDS DOWN the BEST ones are these neodymium ones. I have not been able to find a good local source for these, so ordering is probably your best option.

They’re small but MIGHTY! I can promise you nothing will be sliding down your fridge. I bet you could even hold the phone book with a couple of these. Phone books, kids, are what people used back in the dark ages when they needed to know someone’s phone number. Now they are produced primarily to sell ads and destroy rain forests and take up space in landfills.

Another important part is the glue that holds the magnet together. Again, from my experience, the BEST glue to use is E-6000. It WILL HOLD whatever you want to hold! It reminds me of rubber cement because even after it is set up it still has the tiniest bit of flex to it, which is great because it doesn't get brittle over time. I use this for jewelry and lots of crafty projects. It is one of my favorite adhesives. You can get it at major retailers or on Amazon by clicking on the picture below.

Now that we got the boring part out of the way, it’s time for the fun part! You can glue almost anything to your magnet. Plastic, glass, metal, and wood objects can all make good choices depending on your décor. While it might be tempting to glue magnets to the arms and legs of a small child so you can keep him in one spot for a few minutes, this glue would most likely irritate his sensitive skin, so I do NOT recommend doing that. But I'm not the boss of you, so do whatever you think best. I’m going to show you two different options, but the possibilities are endless.

First, I love to make button magnets. They are cute, inexpensive, a great size and shape, and come in any color. You can make a set to give as an inexpensive, thoughtful gift.

There is a special lady who recently gave me her collection of buttons. I am going to send these magnets to her as a thank you gift made from the buttons she gave me. I also have my grandmother's buttons and my great aunt Martha also gave me her button collection. I'll take your buttons too. I love buttons and the stories that are behind them. In my grandmother's buttons there is one that came off of a tufted sofa. I hated that couch, but I cherish the memory of it now that she is gone.

I like to have everything ready before I get started. I suggest you lay out a piece of wax paper or butcher paper to set your magnets on as they dry.

Now, pay attention to this part… Don’t put them too close together! Seriously, they will SNAP together and cause a chain reaction and they ALL will jump together. You wanna see a mess? You’ll have one. Trust me. I'm a slow learner and this happens EVERY time you get them too close. Just give them a good three or four inches of space and you’ll be okay. Any closer than that and you might be hearing words fly out of your mouth that you didn't mean to say.

So this is what you do. When you open the glue it naturally wants to ooze out, so try to work quickly. I just lay the tube down, hold the magnet in one hand and the button, or coin, or whatever in the other, swipe the magnet across the glue and quickly center it on the button. You don't need much. Don’t worry too much about globs or strings at this point, just make sure it is centered. Set it down on the paper with the decorative side down and the magnet on top. After you've glued all your magnets together, put the lid back on. It’s best to wait an hour or so and then if you have globs of glue they will easily peel off. If you wait until it is REALLY dry, you can still do this, but it is more difficult. Allow to dry for several hours or overnight before handling.

One other little suggestion is to make sure that all your magnets are going the same way. They stick to metal surfaces either way, but sometimes I stack my magnets and if the magnets are glued on in both directions some are upside down. This makes me twitch and get hives, so it’s best to avoid all that nonsense and just put them all on in the same direction to start with.

The second kind of magnets I want to show you are these. Aren't they great? If you have coins from your travels, transforming them into magnets is a great way to keep your souvenirs out where you can enjoy them and are great conversation pieces. They would even be great to bring back as mementos to special friends or family members. They don’t have to be foreign coins to have meaning. You could use coins that are dated with significant years, such as the years your children were born or the year you got married, or even the state quarters that came out a few years ago. Just follow the exact same instructions for the buttons.

I have found the best way to package these if you are gifting them, is to put them in a tin gift card holder. You can purchase them at Michael’s and… well, just about everywhere that gift cards are sold. There is usually a plastic insert that you can easily remove. The magnets will stick to the bottom and stay arranged nice and neat. If you use a non-metal box they will all end up stuck together, which is fine, but doesn't look adorable. The gift tins are only a dollar and come in many themes from birthday to holidays. If you’re really bored you can spray paint it and get creative, but that gets more complicated and our goal is to keep things cute, simple, useful, and frugal!

I hope you liked this tutorial and that you will make some magnets of your own. They might make cute teacher gifts because they will also stick to metal filing cabinets. Just use your imagination and a good glue and you can't go wrong. Let me know you YOUR magnets turned out.

Kristy~