Sunday, January 10, 2010

glass magnets

A fun activity for the dreary winter days. We made these over the holiday break to give to the relatives. You can use decorative paper or my son and his friend really liked cutting out pictures of themselves. For a whole week my son proudly pointed to his face amid the other stuff on our metal front door.

Materials
-flat glass marbles - jumbo sized, clear. I had to order these online, but I once saw them at the dollar store, so if you have time check around. They are usually used in glass vases with flowers.
-decorative paper or photos. old wrapping paper works great. For the photos I printed a bunch on the proof sheet setting of my printer, I think it was 36 photos to a page. that got the faces to be a good size to fit in the marble.
-decoupage medium
-flat craft/paint brush
-hot glue gun and glue
-round magnets
-pencil
-scissors

Directions
Place marble flat side down on paper or photo and move around until desired view.
Trace the marble.
cut out inside pencil mark.
spread decoupage medium liberally on cut out paper/photo.
press paper/photo on flat side of marble.
move until fit nicely, smoothing edges up and around edges of marble.
let dry
apply decoupage medium to back side of paper/photo
let dry
apply a liberal dollop of hot glue in middle of flat side of marble
press round magnet in hot glue
let cool

We set up a sort of assembly line to make multiple magnets. We cut out multiple paper/photos, decoupaged them all at once. Then I handled the glue gun while my son planted the magnets. One hint is to be sure to put enough glue to come around the sides of the magnet, otherwise the magnet eventually falls off.