Ohh heyy!

Remember me?  The girl who decided to stay a full-time student over summer semester.  The one who tries her hardest to maintain a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday posting schedule – but fails epically.  The girl who dropped her phone in the toilet earlier today.  Yup, that’s right.  Me!

I’ve decided I’m going to start doing more DIY projects on the blog.  Mainly because I’ve been doing a lot of them lately.  But don’t worry.  I’m still going to be posting an excessive amount of food. Because, you know : food = life.

Anyhow.

A few weeks ago, I spent a bit of time trying to find a project I could do with Audrey for Mother’s Day.  I made this flower handprint ornament last year and loved the fact I can put her hand up to it to see how much she has grown.  Unfortunately, I let her hold the ornament when we were still living in Richmond (and had hardwood floors) and a petal broke off when she dropped it. Fortunately, my mom graciously switched with me so I still have her little 5 month hand print.  But, I digress.  There was hardly anything on Pinterest that a one-year-old could do, unless I wanted to make her handprint into different images on paper – which didn’t sound like the type of memorable keepsake I wanted.  And, since I already had an item with her handprint, I wanted to try something else.

I finally found an image of a magnet made from salt dough.  It had a thumbprint in red, and then had the quote “Thumb body loves you” written below it.  Genius.

So,  with that idea in my mind, I set out creating my own Mother’s Day gift.  (I know it’s past Mother’s Day, but bear with me… you could totally make this for Father’s Day instead!)

“Thumb body loves you” Magnets

• air dry clay, white
• rolling pin
• cookie cutter (we ended up using a piece to our Linzer cookie cutter set)
• acrylic paints (we used a different color for each person – my daughter and my two nieces)
• magnets
• twin tip Sharpie, black
• fine tip white chalk marker (optional, for “Mother’s Day” magnet)
• super glue
• paint brush

First you want to roll out your clay to be about 1/4″ thick.  Use the cookie cutter to cut out as many magnets as you want.  We ended up doing 6 in case we messed up on the thumbprints, but they ended up turning out great, so I used the remaining three to make the “Mother’s Day” magnets.  The clay will need to dry for at least 24 hours before you can continue.

The next day, I was conveniently watching my nieces, so we were ready to finish the magnets!  First, I squirted a little of the paint in the color they chose onto a paper plate, where they proceeded to dip their thumb in and put their thumbprint onto the upper, center portion of magnet.  This technique wasn’t as easy for my daughter, and I had to hold her arm out and thumb up while my mother painted the color on her thumb with a paint brush and then push the magnet to her thumb.  Oh, the struggles with that one.

For the additional three magnets I had, I decided to paint each of them a corresponding color to the thumbprints.  I thought it would be a cute “pair” of magnets for each girl.

After letting the paint dry for a couple hours, I came back to them with a twin tip Sharpie marker in black and with the thicker of the two tips, I drew a face, arms, and wrote the word “Thumb”.  With the finer tip, I wrote “body loves you”.  I did this intentionally so that the word “Thumb” would stand out more than the rest of the writing.

After I finished writing on each of the magnets, I turned them over and put some super glue, about the size of a dime, on the back and pressed the magnet on.  I let them sit and dry while I worked on the other three magnets.

On the three painted magnets, I wrote “Happy Mother’s Day! ’17” with a white chalk marker.  I chose white because I wanted it to pop against the color, as well as resemble the thumbprint magnets.

When I was done writing on each of those magnets, I turned them over and glued the magnets on the same way.  After the glue was completely dry, I hung them up on the refrigerator!

 

 

 

 

So stinking cute, right?