How to make: Picture Marble Magnets
You will need:
Scissors
Pen or Pencil
Pictures of a suitable size for the marble you use (catalogs and magazines are perfect)
Clear flat marbles (mine are ‘clear lustre jumbo gems’ made by Panacea, found in the floral section at Michael’s)
Glue that dries clear – I used Omni-Stick, also from Michael’s but most any clear-drying glue should work just fine.
Hot Glue/Hot Glue Gun – I used the low setting for these, and it was perfect
Magnets – I used 1/2″ round discs for this project, but they could have been a little bigger – all depending on the size of the marble you use or Thumbtacks – I used ones found in the quilting section at Michael’s because they’re a bit bigger than other thumbtacks I’ve found (I think…).
First, take your marble and find a picture that will center inside it nicely. Draw around the marble so you will know where to cut, and then just cut out the picture(s).
Here are all my pictures cut out, ready for gluing to the marble.
Now take a small amount of glue (use glue that will dry clear – I used Omni-Stick that I bought at Michael’s) to make a small circle in the center of the picture. Place the marble on top of the picture and swish it around on top of the picture a little bit to make sure the entire bottom of the marble has glue and will adhere really well.
Here are the pictures after they have been glued to the marbles. Make sure to press out any tiny air bubbles. Wait about thirty minutes or so for the glue to dry, then do any trimming around the edges that needs to be done.
Next, take the glue gun and put it on low heat. Now that the glue on the pictures has dried to the marble, it is safe to hot-glue magnets to the back to make them into refrigerator magnets. Just put a small dab of hot glue on the magnet, and press it to the back of the picture. If you put on a little too much glue, it’s okay because nobody will see the back of the magnet anyway. I used 1/2″ magnets for these.
I wanted to make some of these into thumbtacks, so I just hot-glued these to the backs of my picture-marbles also. Now I have some for my bulletin board and some for my refrigerator.
Here are the thumbtacks all glued on. I used the ones that are in the quilting section of Michael’s because they’re a little bit bigger than regular thumbtacks (I think).
Here they are! My new picture-marble-magnets work and look great! I’ve got the thumbtacks downstairs and they work really well too. This project took about 60-90 minutes from start to finish – including glue-drying time. I don’t have the receipt in front of me, but I would estimate the cost for the 12 that I did to be less than $15, including the tube of Omni-Stick that I only used about 1/30th of.