Value Magnets: A Tutorial

Pinterest is great for finding ideas for Young Womens activities... in fact one of my very first pins was of some value magnets that I thought were just adorable.  The problem is the ones I found didn't have a tutorial, so I searched around, brainstormed, did a practice round, and in the end we had a lot of fun making our own magnets.  They definitely don't look as "professional" as the ones I "pinned", but I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

Anyway, here's my little tutorial :-)

Supplies:

• Bottle Caps - without the liners.  The only ones I could find in my local craft stores had the liners, so I purchased these online through Sun and Moon.  You can purchase these individually or in bulk.  I bought them individually for 10 cents each.
• Glue Dots
• Diamond Glaze - I bought Judikins Diamond Glaze from A Cherry on Top for $5.99 a bottle.  I did finally find this at a local craft store for $7.99 a bottle, but even with shipping I ended up saving money by purchasing online.
• Scrapbook Paper - for each value color
• Magnets - I just used self-adhesive sheet magnets that I purchased from Joanns (with a 40% off coupon), but you can probably use any magnets on these.

First I had to print out the values on different colors of paper.  I don't have a color printer, so I printed all the words in bold black, but used a different color of scrapbook paper for each value.  I was trying to save money by not buying new scrapbook paper and just using scraps I had at home.  This took me a while to figure out, so let me explain in detail!  I started by formatting a word doc with each value in a different font as large as I could get them and still fit in a 1" circle punch (I printed out a few practice sheets of paper).  Once I had all the values in the right size, I cut small pieces of scrapbook paper and taped them right over the top of the values on the plain sheet of computer paper I had printed.  I taped just along the edge of the scrapbook paper so the tape wouldn't interfere with my circle hole punch.

Once I had all the colored scraps taped onto my original paper, I ran it back through the printer.

Then I peeled off the scrapbook paper and took off the tape - it didn't matter if the edges of the paper ripped a little because I only wanted the center anyway.  I used my 1" hole punch to cut circles around each value.

I then glued the circles into my bottle caps with a glue dot, and cut out magnets and adhered them to the back of the bottlecaps.

Next, I filled each bottlecap with the diamond glaze.  This was harder than I expected - I couldn't help but getting air bubbles in the glaze in some of my bottlecaps, and they are impossible to pop!  Oh well.

Once the papers were covered with the diamond glaze, they need to dry for about 24-48 hours.  The diamond glaze looks cloudy at first, but they do dry clear!  Note: Don't touch the glaze to see if it's dry... if it isn't it will leave a fingerprint or indentation on the glaze :-)

The one bummer thing about the paper I used is that some of the papers "ran" under the diamond glaze and were discolored from what I had originally intended.  Oh well!