Homemade Gift Idea - Refrigerator Magnets

Refrigerator magnets make a great homemade gift idea because they are fun to make, pretty easy, and can be delightful for people to receive because you really can personalize it by using photos that are unique to each gift recipient. You can use photos of their children, their favorite musician or actor. If the person is into birding, you can use images of different species of birds. If the gift recipient is into astronomy, you could use images of a galaxies or other phenomenon.

Items you will need:

Flat glass gems...

Flat glass gems are like flattened glass clear marbles that are perfectly flat on one side, and rounded on the other. They can be found at Michael's, your local craft shop, or at online retailers like wholesalersusainc.com. They come in a wide range of sizes and colors. I would stick with the clear 1/2 inch to 1 inch varieties, as the magnets will support them better, and they have a more gem-like appearance at a smaller size.

Magnets...

Avoid the thin sheet-like adhesive magnets as they will not support the weight of the glass very well. I would recommend strong 3/16" non-adhesive thick circle magnets. I found some at Michael's, and at save-on-crafts.com. You also might want to try your local craft store or hardware store.

Adhesive...

Any strong clear adhesive from your local craft store will do the job, but I have found that Diamond Glaze Adhesive dries crystal clear and bonds very securely.

Images...

The important thing is to think when decided on images is who is receiving the gift, and what are they interested in. You can clip images out from magazines, use some of your own photos, or download free images from a royalty free site like everystockphoto.com. You'll want to get the part of the image down to a size so that it fits the diameter of the glass marble. There many ways to do this on the computer. If you have a program like Photoshop just go up to the Image menu, go to Image Size and just enter the size there. If you are using Windows's Paint, use the square selection tool to draw a box around your image and drag a corner point to resize the image to the desired dimensions. In the application Preview on a Mac, go to the Tools menu, select Adjust Size and enter the size there. I think there are ways to do this in other programs like Microsoft Word, as well as many other ways, or just cut the photos out of photos or magazines

The process..

Putting it all together is quite easy.

1. Cut out your photo to fit the diameter of the glass marble gem.
2. Use the clear adhesive to glue the face of the photo to the flat side of the glass marble gem.
3. Let dry... it shouldn't take too long but refer to the instructions on the adhesive tube.
4. Glue the magnet to the back of the photo.
5. Let dry and your gifts are done!

I had a lot of fun making these gifts. It would be fun to get kids involved in this, because they probably would have a knack for find some fun and funny images and ideas to use.