Thursday, November 17, 2011

Magnetic Distraction

On a previous post I mentioned that I had an appointment with a recruitment agency, that appointment has since resulted in a job with the NHS. The job starts next week, and I'm already planning what tools to buy with my first paycheck. In the meantime, to fill my days, I've taken my little Singer sewing machine in for a service, emailed a company about sourcing an industrial sewing machine, started collecting some vintage fabrics, and um... watched a lot of daytime telly. Don't judge me, I haven't had a television in over a decade.

I've also been using this time to work on some craft projects.
Starting over in a new country (new in that I've not lived here in 12 years), and starting over in a new career is a bit of an expensive venture, so this holiday season I'm going all out on the thrift front and I'm making my own gifts. I can post one of them now, but only because I got too excited about hiding it away for the next month and have already given this particular gift to David.

So here it is - A Guide to Making London Underground Line Magnets.

I chose this particular theme because David is a transport nerd, so we have a bit of a London Underground thing going on in our hallway,

London Underground Map and Station Clock

and in the hallway we have a notice board with rather rubbish magnets that only cost £1.00 but are incredibly useless at holding themselves up, let alone single pieces of paper:


Multiple magnets needed for each piece of paper

Close-up of rubbish magnet
I was inspired to make our own magnets by Jessica Jones' blog "How About Orange" and her Pantone Chip Magnets. Instead of using Pantone paint chips, I cheekily google searched an image of the London Underground Lines, printed out the coolest looking ones,


Cut-outs of Tube Lines

cut out strips of foam board to size and chamfered the edges,


Foam board strips

attached stick-on magnets to the back of the foam,


Roll of stick-on magnets

placed double-sided sticky tape to the front of the foam strips, and attached the cut-out Tube line names:

Double-sided sticky tape

Following Jessica Jones' lead, I used some Aleene's Paper Glaze to give the magnets a nicer finish. The glaze makes the paper look like ceramic tile:


Couldn't find a paint brush, so used a make-up brush instead. Oops.

See? Shiny.

Mmmm. Shiny.

Several coats are recommended to make the magnets look like ceramic tile.

I'll post the finished magnets, smugly holding up multiple pieces of paper, once the paper glaze has dried.

***********

Dec 4th, 2011.

I finally got around to taking a photo of the magnets on the board, even though they have been doing a magnificent job of holding up various scraps of paper for several weeks now.

So here they are:



And here are two sets of Boston subway magnets, requested by my friend Nealia, which are now winging their way to America by post.


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