Make your own magnets!

I'm sure you all have seen the magnets made of the clear glass mancala beads (or flat marbles).  But did you know how easy and inexpensive they are to make?

First you'll need to gather your materials:

• Mancala beads (you can find them at most craft stores, usually in the fake flower section, and I have also found them at the dollar store)
• Magnet of some sort, either the small flat round magnets, or magnet strip; however, I'll warn you the magnetic charge on the strips of magnets is pretty weak.  I used them in this tutorial but that is because I happened to have a roll of it lying around
• Glue (I used E-6000 which you can find at most craft stores)
• Magazine pages, scrapbook paper, etc. (anything with a pattern you like on it!)

Once you've got everything together, start cutting out patterns from your magazine/scrapbook paper into the shape of the mancala bead.  I usually cut my paper slightly smaller than the bead itself so it doesn't hang off the edges, and the beads slightly magnify the image so from the front it looks like it goes to the edges.

Also if you're not sure how a pattern would look on a magnet I will hold the mancala bead over the magazine page to see what it looks like.

Put a dab of glue on the piece of paper.

Place your mancala bead on top of the paper and press down.  You'll see the glue spread under the bead and you want to push until it has spread to all of the edges.

Now we want to add the magnet to the bead.  If you have round magnets you'd just put glue on one side of the magnet and stick it to the back of the mancala bead.  If you are using magnetic strips you'll want to cut a piece of magnet to the size you want.  Peel the tape off the back of the magnet and add a dab of glue to the sticky side.

Then stick this onto the back of the mancala bead.  Let the glue dry for a couple hours (or however long the instructions on the glue say) and you've got your very own customized magnets!

Here are some that I made out of a map in a Dwell magazine:

And here are some that I made in some shades of blue that I liked:

Have you made some magnets like these?  I would love to see how yours turned out!