Make Magnets from Any Paper: My Three Favorite Methods

 

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

Magnets are a fun and easy way to show off your tiniest art, upcycle your favorite photographs, or display comic book panels, sweet love notes, or pretty papers of all kinds.

I am sooo glad that “cluttercore” is now a thing, because just between us, it’s always been *my* thing. A bare wall or surface is nothing but a spot that I haven’t put something cute yet!

To my endless irritation, my refrigerator isn’t magnetic, but I’ve made up for it by DIYing a giant magnetic wall in the kitchen, and a smaller one in the family room. I love displaying all the greeting cards, A+ schoolwork, concert tickets, and assorted other tchotchkes that one generally puts on a magnet board, but to be honest, my favorite things to display are the magnets, themselves!

Magnets are a great way to upcycle all kinds of cute little things that you’d love to have on display but that are too wee for mounting and framing. I love making all my special little mementos, from postcards to greeting card sentiments to Instamax photos to fortune cookie fortunes into magnets, so I can enjoy looking at them while they hold up other stuff I enjoy looking at–it’s cluttercore at its most decadent, lol!

Here are my favorite ways to DIY magnets from any paper!

Method #1: Mat Board and a Button Magnet

For this method, you will need:

• paper to display
• adhesive (archival glue or double-sided tape, AND E6000 or similar epoxy glue)
• mat board or book board
• button magnet
• ruler, craft knife, scissors

Cut roughly around your image, leaving a border that you can trim to size later. Then, use archival-quality glue or double-sided tape to adhere your image to the back side (not the pretty colored side, unless you want to chance the color being visible through the front of your art!) of mat board.

Use a ruler (a metal one is better than the beat-up plastic one I’m using in the photo below) and craft knife to trim the image and its mat board backing to size:

To seal the front of the image, I like to either laminate it in packing tape or cover it in Diamond Glaze or several coats of Mod Podge. Here, I used packing tape:

Any other fans of My Life as a Background Slytherin out there?

Use E6000 or a similar epoxy glue to adhere a button magnet to the back of the mat board. You can also add additional embellishments like gems and stickers to the front, Sharpie the edges, poke holes at the bottom and add tassels, and do whatever else you can think of to pretty up your magnet further!

Method #2: Sticker/Magnet Maker

For this method you will need:

• paper to display
• Xyron Creative Station Lite or similar machine, with a magnet+laminate cartridge installed
• scissors

If you’ve got (or can borrow!) a store-bought sticker/magnet maker, it makes creating magnets from your own papers SUPER easy.

I own this specific Xyron sticker/magnet maker, but I’ve also got teenagers and their friends who all use the snot out of it, so it gets a lot of use. If you don’t want to buy a whole entire one all for yourself, it’s worth checking out your public library’s DIY or teen space or asking your local Buy Nothing group for one to borrow.

To use a machine like this, you feed your paper into it and let it add adhesive magnet sheeting to the back and laminate the front:

The laminating is especially nice for papers that are glossy or ink that’s water-soluble. Kid art made with washable markers can be so delicate! It’s also an easy way to make a magnet out of an entire photo for display on my gigantic magnet boards.

Method #3: Adhesive Magnet Sheets

For this method, you will need:

• paper to display
• adhesive magnet sheets
• scissors

This method is best for papers that don’t need lamination, Diamond Glaze, or Mod Podge. I like it for my comic panels and my collection of vintage space-themed stamps, but basically anything commercially printed or printed on a laser printer could get away without lamination.

To make these magnets, roughly cut around your image, stick it to the adhesive side of an adhesive magnet sheet, then trim it to size.

Crafting this magnets is a fun kid project, especially for tweens and teens. Give them lots of magazines to cut from, plenty of adhesive magnet sheets, and let them have at it! The finished magnets make sweet handmade gifts for friends and family.

Pro tip: these easy magnets are awesome for the front of a college student’s mini fridge!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Homeschool High School Chemistry: Electrolysis of Water Lab

Another day, another kitchen table chemistry lab!

I don't know what the "proper" number of hands-on labs a high school student usually conducts in a non-AP Science class is (in her year of public school Honors Biology, my own teenager conducted one), but in our homeschool high school honors science classes, I try for at least ten high-quality labs, experiments, and/or demonstrations, all written up by the student in her lab notebook for that subject. 

And they don't have to be complicated! This Electrolysis of Water lab could be conducted by an early elementary student, it's so simple. It takes just minutes, and it's easy as pie to conduct at the kitchen table.

To make it appropriate for a high school Honors Chemistry lab, just add rigor! When she completed this lab, my teenager was studying Lewis Electron-Dot Structures and calculating chemical reaction formulas, so I wrote her Post-Lab Questions to require her to practice these skills in a real-world environment.

In AP Language and Literature, she's looking deeper into the etymologies of words, so I also included a question about that to build context. 

Here's the set-up for the lab (pretend that you don't see the erasable pen that my teenagers like to use to cheat the lab notebook system of "write in pen; no erasing"):

Salting the water to the proper ratio (feel free to admire the chopstick stirring rod...):

Attaching the wires to the battery (the electrodes are currently touching, but she'll fix that as soon as she notices):

And now... observation! I always think that this is the coolest, most magical demonstration. Look at all the bubbles!

A surprise to us all: we didn't expect the aluminum to start flaking away! 

Is it an aluminum oxide coating on the foil? A manufacturing flaw resulting in improper adhesion of the aluminum that weakens it?

My favorite thing about science is the way that new information inspires new questions!

If that's not enough electrolysis for you, here are a few extension activities:

• incorporate Snap Circuits. I actually thought pretty hard about incorporating part of this demonstration, because we have sooooo many Snap Circuits. This would be an especially good extension if your focus is actually on electricity. 
• incorporate a pH indicator. This is a neat addition, especially if you've recently studied pH. Red cabbage pH indicator is another excellent homeschool DIY project!
• clean iron. The Children's Museum of Indianapolis has a giant electrolysis tank where you can observe the real-time process of rust removal from one of Captain Kidd's cannons, so you can observe this real-world bit of science in action even if you don't have your own iron to clean via electrolysis.

And here are a couple of books that include similar electrolysis experiments. The Marie Curie book is even written TO middle-grade kids!

And there you have it: excellent science using household materials in just a few minutes. With that little time spent on the actual lab, you've got plenty of room to really ramp up the rigor of the post-lab questions!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

DIY Coloring Book with an Upcycled Cardboard Cover

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

A DIY coloring book lets you customize exactly the coloring pages you want!

I was in the market for a new adult coloring book the other day, but I just could not find what I wanted! Honestly, how hard could it be to find a small-scale book with spoopy images that would be fairly quick to color and would have no swears, but also wouldn’t be baby-ish?

Ugh, it was SO hard!

Eventually, I went back to the only sure-fire way to get something that is EXACTLY the way I want it: DIY!

I modified my go-to DIY journal with a cover made from upcycled cardboard, and filled it with coloring pages downloaded from the interwebs. It’s exactly what I wanted, and here’s how you can make one, too!

To make your own DIY coloring book with an upcycled cover, you will need:

• coloring pages. Yes, you CAN print coloring pages in an eco-friendly manner! For each coloring book, you’ll want 10-12 coloring pages, printed two-to-a-page on cardstock. You’ll only be using one side of this cardstock, so feel free to use up the back sides of cardstock that’s already been printed on one side.
• upcycled cardboard. You need two pieces, each about 6″x7″. Any weight from cardboard food packaging to corrugated shipping box cardboard works well–in these photos, I’ve used both!
• metal butter knife. A bone folder or back of a spoon also works well.
• stapler and (optional) rubber block eraser. If you don’t have a long reach stapler, I’ll show you how to get the same effect with a regular stapler and a wedge eraser.
• measuring and cutting supplies. I used a gridded quilting ruler and guillotine paper cutter.

Step 1: Arrange and trim the coloring pages.

Print 10-12 coloring pages two to a page on cardstock, so that you have 5-6 of these sheets for your coloring book.

Trim the excess paper from the top and bottom of your sheets. If you have a good guillotine paper cutter, you can stack the sheets together and trim them all at once!

Step 2: Measure and cut the upcycled cardboard book cover.

Most types of cardboard should work well for this project… even thin food packaging, like this empty popsicle box that I rescued from my recycling bin!

Open the box so that it lies flat, then fussy cut two pieces of cardboard to serve as the book cover. You want the dimensions of the cover to be slightly larger than the dimensions of each page; for this half-scale coloring book, with top and bottom margins trimmed away, 6″x7″ was perfect.

Step 3: Trim and tape the book cover.

Order the coloring book pages, then fold them sharply in half, coloring images to the inside. Burnish the fold with the butt end of the butter knife to make it even sharper.

Compare the sizing of the finished quire to the book cover, and trim as needed. Above, I’m using the quire as a visual aid to mark where I want to trim my cover, because I’m too lazy to measure.

Now comes the magical part! Lay a length of duct tape, sticky side up, on your work surface. Set the two pieces of book cover on the tape, with about a 1/8″ gap between them. Tear off enough tape to fold over the spine completely and overlap just a bit. There shouldn’t be any sticky side left uncovered!

Use your fingernail or knife tip to burnish down that crack between the two halves of the cover, then turn the cover over and burnish the other side, as well. When you’re finished, you will have a complete book cover with a duct tape hinge.

Step 4: Staple the pages into the book.

Center the coloring book pages inside the cover so that the fold of the pages lines up with the duct tape hinge of the cover. You’ll have to flip this whole book over and staple it from the other side to keep the staple ends hidden, so feel free to secure the quire to the cover with a bit of washi tape, if you’d like.

If you’re lucky enough to own a long-reach stapler, just staple the cover to the pages from the outside. However, if you have a standard stapler, get a rubber wedge eraser or, as in the photo above, a stamp-carving blank, and center it underneath the spot where you want to staple.

Unhinge the stapler and staple the hinge from the outside, stapling into that rubber wedge eraser. Repeat for each of the other two staples you’ll put into the hinge from the outside.

Turn the book over and remove the rubber eraser, and you’ll see all the pointy staple ends sticking up alarmingly.

To solve the problem of pointy staple ends, just use the flat side of the butter knife to push them down!

This is a handy little coloring book to keep in your backpack in readiness for any time that boredom might strike.

Are your kids interested in other bookmaking projects? My kids LOVE bookmaking, and we've done a TON of bookmaking projects together over the years!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Here's How to Make an Easy Macrame Plant Hanger

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

This easy macrame plant hanger makes a comfy home for all your favorite plants!

Like every city planner faced with overcrowding, I am dodging population control measures with my houseplants by instead going vertical. Every window is fair game, as is every corner with ambient light. Even the central room with no exterior windows now has a couple of ferns hanging under the skylight.

Plant hangers are great for getting your houseplants off your crowded shelves and into those sunny windows. They also put all of those tempting spider plants and inch plants and other delightfully dangly leaves out of the reach of cats, dogs, and toddlers.

Especially if you’ve got an older house, though, or any place with unconventional windows or other spaces, you’ve probably found that store-bought plant hangers just don’t fit your space exactly the way you’d like. Or maybe they’re just not the right color. Or maybe, like me, you simply don’t want to have to buy something when you’ve already got everything that you need to make it.

That’s why I found myself making my latest stash of plant hangers: the houseplants had a bumper year, and after dividing them and giving tons away I still had more than I have room for on my shelves. But my weird old house with its half-vaulted ceilings and oddly-sized windows doesn’t lend itself to the comfortable placement of most lengths of plant hangers. AND about five years ago both of my kids went through an epic paracord crafting phase, one that left me with a large stash of unused paracord after they both eventually moved on to using up all of my embroidery floss on super elaborate friendship bracelets.

I have made SO many macrame plant hangers this summer, using my easy technique that lets me make them exactly the length that I want. Here’s how you can make yourself an easy macrame plant hanger, too!

Supplies

To make this easy macrame plant hanger, you will need:

• split o ring. This is the ring that holds your cute keychain. You want it to be VERY sturdy, but most keychain rings are.
• macrame cording. Cotton cording is availability in multiple widths and colors, and is natural, eco-friendly, and quite sturdy and long-lived when used indoors. Any cording that doesn’t stretch will work well for this project, however. This paracord that I’m using, although it’s all polyester and therefore an ecological nightmare, actually makes amazing plant hangers! Whatever you choose, you’ll need 80 feet, or eight 10-foot lengths, for the hanger, and 2 feet, or two 1-foot lengths, for the gathering knots.
• tape. A lightly sticky tape, like masking tape or washi tape, will help you keep cords together as you knot them.

Step 1: Use a gathering knot to tie the cording to the split ring.

Cut eight pieces of cording, each approximately 10 feet long, and one piece of cording approximately one foot long.

Thread the eight pieces of cording through the split o-ring and center them.

Now, it’s gathering knot time!

With one end of the cord, make a long “u” over the spot where you’d like the gathering knot to be. I like mine just below the o ring.

Keep that “u” in place as you take the other end of the cord in hand and begin to tightly wrap the bundle with it. Each wrap should be just below the one above.

When you near the end of your cord, leave a long tail and tuck the end through the bottom of the “u.”

Put your hand back on the top tail above the gathering knot, and pull on it to tug the “u” bend, and the end of the cord that’s tucked into it, up inside the gathering knot. It’s a bit of a fiddly process to figure out exactly the right amount of strength to use, so don’t feel sad if you have to start this knot over a couple of times.

The finished gathering knot will look like the one above, with the “u” bend pulled inside to the middle. Notice that I left such a long bottom tail that you can still see it, but the knot itself is well-secured.

Trim both tails for a cleaner look.

Step 2: Tie four groups of five square knots below the gathering knot.

Separate out four adjacent cords. The cord on the right will be what the vertical sides of the knots will look like, and the cord on the left will be the center color.

Ignore the fact that I’m not working up by the gathering knot here. It was too hard to photograph single-handed!

Pass the cord on the left OVER the two center cords and UNDER the right cord.

Pass the cord on the right UNDER the center two cords and OVER the left cord. You can also think of this as putting it through that left loop made by the left cord as it prepared to pass over the center cords.

Pull the knot tight.

You can see that the vertical piece is created on the opposite side from where you started–if you lose count, you can use that to tell you what side you’re on. You can also see that the left and right cords switched places.

To finish the square knot, continue from the right. Pass the right cord OVER the two center cords and UNDER the cord on the left.

Pass the left cord UNDER the two center cords and OVER the right cord, or through the loop that the right cord made when preparing to pass under the center cords.

Pull the knot tight. It should tuck up right under the knot above it.

Repeat four more times to make a total of five square knots with that group of cords. Hint: you’ll have five vertical pieces on each side.

Repeat three more times to make a total of four sets of knots around the gathering knot. This will use up all your dangling cording.

Step 3: Make a second set of square knots six inches below the first set.

Measure down approximately six inches from the bottom of the first set of square knots.

From two adjacent sets of square knots, take the two right cords from the left set and the two left cords from the right set. These are the cords you’ll use for your next set of square knots. I like to tape them flat and in the correct order, because at this point it’s very easy to start getting mixed up.

Tie another set of five square knots (one knot starting from the left, then another knot starting from the right equals one set) with these cords.

Repeat with the remaining three sets of cording, until you have four new sets of square knots, each six inches below the first set and made up of cords from two adjacent sets above.

Step 4: Repeat the process 1-2 more times.

You have enough cording to tie four total sets of square knots, each set approximately six inches below the set above. That being said, four sets results in a plant hanger that is quite long, and I prefer to stop at three sets for most of my plant hangers.

Step 5: Tie a gathering knot at the bottom of the plant hanger.

Measure six inches from the bottom of your final set of gathering knots, and tape the cords together at that spot.

Using the second piece of foot-long cording, tie a gathering knot at this tape mark.

Trim the rest of the cords below the gathering knot.

On the left is a shorter plant hanger (three sets of five square knots long) mounted just above the window. On the right is a longer plant hanger (four sets of five square knots long) mounted to the ceiling.

These plant hangers are super versatile, and since you only have to learn two knots, they’re super beginner-friendly, too! Once you’ve mastered this simple version, feel free to fancy it up with more complicated knots.

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!