Craft Project Week 1: Glass Magnets

Our crafting day did happen this weekend, I am just a wee bit behind on posting the results...imagine that. Let me just begin by saying that it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure, especially if you live in a small town, that the craft stores carry all of the supplies that you need. But you probably already know that 'cause you plan ahead...... Needless to say I wanted to use the larger two inch glass half marbles, but the stores in my area only had a multicolored package which only contain about 6 clear marbles, so needless to say before we began the craft I was a little disappointed, but the kids didn't know any difference and they had a BLAST!

Danika, a friend from Oklahoma, had surprised me with a wonderful Yarn & Loops knitting bag and a variety of knitting related glass marbles (above) this summer when we went down to visit family. So I had been anticipating a time when I might be able to try making these magnets myself! We began by covering the table with newspaper and getting all of our supplies ready.

I had used a number of sources, while researching the best way to recreate this project with kids. There were many recommendations here and Not Martha ,but I opted for using Mod Podge like it suggests in the Micheal's Craft book, because I thought it would be the safest substance. Here's the list of supplies we used:

*Flat Paint brushes

*Mod Podge
*Small 1 inch half glass marbles
*Larger 1 1/2 to 2 inch half glass marbles
*Newspaper
*Paper Towels
*Pictures of the kids
*Used holiday/birthday Cards
*Kid scissors
*scrapbooking papers
*Altoid tins or other metal tins (found here or really fancy ones here)
*Window cleaner
*E6000 glue(I used this to glue the magnets in place)

Even the smallest hands can manage this craft, as long as an adult puts the magnets on with the E600 glue. Benjamin enjoyed using the flat brush to paint on mod podge.

We found that one of the best sources were the used cards I collected over the years. Of course I didn't use any of my beautifully scrapped cards, but I have a stash of notecards and greeting cards that I have been saving......just waiting for the perfect way to recycle them. They were the preferred choice for Jake because he discovered he could make magnet sets easily by cutting out the scenes. Isn't that snowman set ideal to adorn the fridge this winter! So I thought I would send this set to a special someone, along with some of the kids art work they created this fall at school!

You probably noticed that one of the snowmen has some extra paper around it. We discovered that it was much easier for little hands to put the mod podge on the back of the half marble and then stick it on the chosen picture....let it dry and then cut the excess off, 'cause sometimes it was hard to cut out a picture to the right size. All in all it was a very successful crafting day. Wouldn't you say?