This Wednesday I'm bragging about a project from a while ago, but one that's still used all the time and I'm still very proud of.
When I first discovered Pinterest, one of my first projects was making some pretty drink coasters. I've made additional batches of them from time to time, using seasonal ribbon to make them festive (yay for the Target $1 bins!)
As I was playing with the coasters, I also took one of the painted ones to make a dishwasher magnet. You know, one of those clean/dirty magnets. The dishwasher in our new house doesn't have a little light when the cycle's done, so it's a little harder to tell at a glance when things are clean. As compared to our old one, at least. This is the solution, a project in the Efforts to Organize Myself category.
There are dozens of ideas for this sort of thing on Pinterest. I liked the penguin one (sorry I don't have a better link) and the Scrabble tile one was pretty neat. The Christina Aguilera one (No. 19) was just plain funny, but the joke would get old day after day. And I don't like the Americana or country kitchen or shabby chic color schemes. Nothing against those decorating schemes, just not my personal taste. So, none were strong favorites. Thus, I had to come up with my own.
When I first discovered Pinterest, one of my first projects was making some pretty drink coasters. I've made additional batches of them from time to time, using seasonal ribbon to make them festive (yay for the Target $1 bins!)
As I was playing with the coasters, I also took one of the painted ones to make a dishwasher magnet. You know, one of those clean/dirty magnets. The dishwasher in our new house doesn't have a little light when the cycle's done, so it's a little harder to tell at a glance when things are clean. As compared to our old one, at least. This is the solution, a project in the Efforts to Organize Myself category.
There are dozens of ideas for this sort of thing on Pinterest. I liked the penguin one (sorry I don't have a better link) and the Scrabble tile one was pretty neat. The Christina Aguilera one (No. 19) was just plain funny, but the joke would get old day after day. And I don't like the Americana or country kitchen or shabby chic color schemes. Nothing against those decorating schemes, just not my personal taste. So, none were strong favorites. Thus, I had to come up with my own.
As I said, I took one of the painted coasters to use as the base for my magnet. I used two different fonts of sticker letters from my scrapbooking stash. The magnets were sorta from my stash too - I'd been keeping those free business card magnets that come with the newspaper or phonebook or whatever, actually for projects just like this (they're stored in the King Leo Peppermint tin in the picture below). So, really a nice cheap project too! Always a plus :)
Back to the stickers... I used two different white fonts to write out Clean and Dirty. I chose drastically different fonts, so that it'd be easy to tell at a glance. Remember, they are upside-down to each other, so that the magnet can rotate and still be legible.
I wanted to keep it all black and white, so the last decorations were simply a few white swirls. The swirls were made by using a nail polish pen, the type used for French manicures and decorative manicures. I used the polish pen, as I didn't have other white paint, and it was both opaque and easy to draw with. You can use whatever you want to decorate, obviously. .
Everything was decoupaged in place, and then a few coats of Mod Podge over the top too, to make sure the stickers will stay very put. The front was finished with a few coats of clear spray paint, for the moisture resistance.
The magnets were glued to the back with Superglue. The hot glue didn't take as well to the covering on the magnet business cards, too shiny I guess, but the Superglue did the trick. Make sure you attach enough magnets to keep the coaster up; if your coaster's a heavier one, you might need more magnetic material on the back to keep it from sliding off your washer.
I wanted to keep it all black and white, so the last decorations were simply a few white swirls. The swirls were made by using a nail polish pen, the type used for French manicures and decorative manicures. I used the polish pen, as I didn't have other white paint, and it was both opaque and easy to draw with. You can use whatever you want to decorate, obviously. .
Everything was decoupaged in place, and then a few coats of Mod Podge over the top too, to make sure the stickers will stay very put. The front was finished with a few coats of clear spray paint, for the moisture resistance.
The magnets were glued to the back with Superglue. The hot glue didn't take as well to the covering on the magnet business cards, too shiny I guess, but the Superglue did the trick. Make sure you attach enough magnets to keep the coaster up; if your coaster's a heavier one, you might need more magnetic material on the back to keep it from sliding off your washer.
Ta-da! All done!
And here it is in use!
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