Jun 28, 2009

Ladybug fridge magnets



There are lots of bug magnets online that I looked at before dreaming these up. The steps were:

1. Paint the clothespins black (I pulled the springs out first so they would stay silver and reassembled them once they'd dried a couple of hours)
2. Cut out red craft foam as shown for wings (an oval with a small wedge cut out)
3. Glue black sequins to foam for spots
4. Cut a 2-3in piece of black pipe cleaner and fold it into two antennae
5. Glue wings to the clothespin with about 3/4 inch for the face, then glue anttenae and googly eyes into that space
6. Once things have set up a bit, glue a magnet to the underside (I use fairly powerful round magnets, make sure what you use will stick to the refrigerator and hold some weight)

I think they'd be cuter if I was able to curve the wings downward a bit. You might try to think up some way to do that.

Prettier Notebooks


My sister found a stash of old composition notebooks at home, so I decided to make a project of them. I found a couple of similar projects online, though I can't track them down now. Basically, all I did was ...
1. Cut the paper to size for front and back (not covering the spine) and glue it down using Modge Podge (one site recommended using binder clip to hold paper together and away from glue)
2. Cut ridged ribbon to length (about 1.5-2 inches wide), and seal off ends with clear nail polish
3. Glue ribbon along spine trying to get it fairly even on front and back (helps to stand up notebook on long side and lay ribbon along spine and adhere to both sides at once)