Gifts: Board with Magnets

So I have been crafting and now I am posting. I wish I had taken more pictures of projects before I gave them away but here is a taste at least.

My mom has a ton of siblings which means I have a ton of aunts and uncles and cousins, and well relatives in general. Being out of work has made the traditional $20-$25 dollar each seem a lot less do-able. I still wanted to do something so I decided I wanted to see if I could turn 5-10 dollars each into the acceptable gift range. I think I succeeded but as mentioned I didn't take picture enough. The first project I don't have pictures at all which is rather disappointing but I will try and get you the gist in case you want to try for yourself.

My first inspiration came at the dollar store. I bought a bag of one inch glass circles. I had seen them turned into magnets and thought it was perfect. The dollar store did not have magnets:( I went to Staples and found the tape I wanted was more than what I wanted to spend. Instead I decided why not buy pre-made magnets and ripe the magnet off? Hahahaha. Yes. That is just what I did. It cost me $1.99 a pack. I bought three 2 for gifts and one for myself or maybe someone else down the line.

They actually ended up working better than expected!

The design showed above was the last package I opened and did not work as well. When I ripped the magnets off the first batches I realized that the design came off pretty easily as well. So I didn't even end up using the dollar store glass thingys. I save the packaging and put my magnets back into them after I had changed the pictures. People seemed to really get a kick out of this detail. They did a double take when they realized they were the ones in the photos!

The photos were easy enough as well. The hardest part was having well the photo. I had to dig through some digital archives of mine to locate enough for the specific person(s) the gift was intended for. But sure enough I found them, put them back on my memory card and went to Rite Aid. Although I might have liked to try and format myself and probably could have saved money taking them to my former work. I couldn't do that. I just couldn't.

Rite Aid was fine. I prefer higher quality prints of photos but the ease of use of their machine couldn't be beat. I put my card in. It took a second to bring up pictures (my fault I had a ton on there) and then I selected collage. It let me choose roughly 8-9 to put on to a 4x6in photo which ended up being pretty much perfect sizing. Here is an example of other photos I printed and cut from the same sized sheets. I think they cost me like .45 a sheet because I did them instantly instead of coming back later or another day.

They came out really cute with pictures of family all small inside but of course no pic of that (sorry).

I decided this was not going to be enough. I kept trying to think of a cool way to display them or something to make the gift fit the appropriate price range. As of now I was only a couple bucks in and so I could afford to purchase or make something else but what?

I tried putting the magnets on coffee cans but then shouldn't I put something inside. I thought about on beer cans because what guy doesn't like beer, right? But nothing seemed right. Then I decided to go shopping with my mom. I was running out of time and she needed to go to Walmart anyways so I said what the heck I'll take a look around. Now I don't love walmart sometimes things are cheap but often you get what you pay for:( And the parking, service and overall experience well sucks!

While I was there searching all over I found a tin plate that had cheesy wording for .50. I thought hey I could remodel this:) But that proved difficult. I mean little time. Little inspiration. Then my mom pointed me toward back to school she is a teacher and I figured glue was on sale or something :o) Instead she showed me a $4.50 white board. Small but it could do the job. But for that price I wanted something well more impressive than this mini board she was showing me. I ended up finding it a couple isles over 2 bucks for a similar sized board. Most of the colors of border were bad like weird plastic red or purple but she dug in there and pulled out 2 navy bordered ones which were perfect! Two for the price of one made even me happy.

We continued our tour of the store and I thought paint chips OMG walmart has paint chips. I didn't know exactly what to do with them but I knew I needed some. So I got a bunch and felt this trip to be a success. I passed some cool duct tape but it wasn't quite right. And not super cheap either I might add. Then I found my inspiration. It is the start of football season and I had seen a lot of football related items but the price is never right on that stuff. Anyways, for these boys the team of choice is the chargers. I found gold sparkle foam sheets and had to buy one.

I cut a bolt out used a sparkle marker to outline in blue glued it to my dry erase boards and voila. The perfect spot to put my homemade magnets! Sorry you have to use your imagination on this one but it turned out really cool trust me! I gave them away before I thought to take pictures but I will try hard to remember next time!