DIY: Bottlecap magnets

I am sure you all have been impatiently waiting for a DIY project! Me too.

Now that we are 253 days from the wedding, it makes sense that I can start crafting!!!

DIY Project 1: Save the date magnets

First, sending out save the dates and doing it fairly soon is important to us since most of our invited guests will be from out of town. Sending it out enables everyone to know exactly when and where the wedding will be so people can save money and/or personal days to take off from work. Also, everyone will get the address for our wedding website for traveling and hotel information and the address for this blog so more people can follow along.

Now let’s start crafting! It is very popular to have a magnet incorporated into your “Save the Date” and I jumped on that bandwagon with no shame. Magnets are fun! Slap it on your fridge and you have a constant reminder of the fun times that lay ahead. I didn’t want the actual save the date to be a magnet. I wanted the magnet to be something cute on its own so that people might reuse it. My mom and aunt make super cute bottle cap jewelry and I thought, well let’s turn bottlecaps into magnets!

Materials needed:

Bottle caps, I used flattened ones from a seller from Etsy, fizzypops, so that they will better fit into the envelope.

Bottle cap epoxy stickers from fizzypops (trust my family, they are much easier to work with than glaze)

1in circle punch

Glue dots, the mini permanent dots, the super thin permanent dots, and also removable regular size dots, one each for 1 magnet. I bought mine from amazon.com.

Magnets

A helper, such as your beautiful and generous mother and fiance

• Create image that fits into a 1in circle. I know you can use Adobe to make beautiful images but I am much more comfortable with power point so here’s my cheat method of making images. I used fonts from dafont.com and I arranged the text boxes like I wanted and made it very big and then grouped all the text boxes together. I then saved the image as a picture by left clicking and selecting “Save as picture”. Next, open powerpoint again. Resize the “slide” to be a standard 8.5 x 11 in sheet of paper. That way you will be working with the image and know exactly how it will print on a regular sheet of paper. (I changed the dpi of the image using Irfanview before the next step to make sure the image looked sharp.)  Insert the image and then copy and paste the image onto the slide over and over leaving enough space between the images so you can punch non-overlapping circles. I spaced the image too close together even though I was thinking about it, so be careful not to do this! Then, click “Save as” under “File” and save it NOT as a powerpoint file, but as a pdf file. Saving it as pdf file ensures that the size of your sheet and images remains the same when you print.
• Print on 80lb cardstock. We used a glossy paper and had it professionally printed on a laser printer at my mom’s work. But, I am sure your home printer and nice cardstock from amazon.com would work fine. We are using our home printer for the actual save the dates.
• Make your mom punch out all your images. My mom was really patient with me as the first tinge of bridezilla came out. I wanted the images centered in the bottle cap, so I kept telling her to re-punch ones that weren’t centered. Wes and my mom said it was all in my head and that not every single one had to be perfect but I think it is pretty obvious. 

See? Would you want to be the person who got a non-centered magnet? I think not… 

Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

Wes and I have a friendly competition going on, so this poll is most interesting to us. J

• Stick the CENTERED punched out image onto one of the epoxy caps with the image facing down. Press firmly all around to remove any air pockets between the cap and the paper. The epoxy caps are sticky already so just place and press.
• Put an ultra-thin glue dot into the bottle cap.
• Put your punched out image with the epoxy cap into the bottle cap.
• Put a mini glue dot onto back of the bottle cap. I liked that these little things were stuck between two sheets. I peeled off one sheet, push the glue dot on the bottle cap and then peeled off the second sheet. So easy.


Excuse my icky nails.


• Take one of your magnets and push it on! A word on magnets: I hate magnets that are too weak to stick to anything. It was really important to me that the magnet would actually stick to our guests’ fridges. So, I bought neodymium magnets. I used these ones from magnets for less. Lots of fun to play with, very small and great holding power!

• Use the removable glue dot to attach the magnet to your Save the Date so it won’t slide around in the envelope.
• Seeing that our save the dates are going to be a bit bulky because of the magnet, we ordered durable 70lb envelopes from actionevenlope.com. We will also get the save the dates hand stamped at the post office so your magnets will arrive intact.

Three hours of my life tops and you get such a fun little thing!

Photos from a booth on the Jersey Shore

Now we need the actual Save the Date… but first the very long process of designing those suckers.