Personalized Magnets

I wanted to make a personalized gift for my Sis-in-law and her family. I collected bottle caps, which was easy once I started collecting glass soda bottles for this project, and some Magic Gloss (pictured below). I found this particular Magic Gloss at HobLob, and I used a 40% coupon.

I hopped onto Jayn's blog, and printed a few family photos on photo paper. Then I traced a circle-about the size of the bottle cap-around each face, and cut them out. I used some left-over cardboard behind my pictures to give each one a small boarder. Before gluing the matted pictures into the bottle cap, I trimmed a piece of foam sticker to sit in the bottom so I didn't need to use so much Magic Gloss to fill the space above the pictures.

Don't mind the necklace chain in the picture, that's from a different project.

Follow the directions for the Magic Gloss to set the epoxy (this particular stuff requires UV so it takes longer to set during our overcast rainy weather). After it sets completely, glue a magnet to the back of the bottle cap using a glue specific for metal. I actually sent these to my Sis-in-law without magnets so she could make them into anything she'd like.

A few things I learned while making these:

• The epoxy/Magic Gloss takes a lot of patience. I got a lot of air bubbles that had to be popped with a tooth pick. After re-doing these a couple of times, I figured out that it worked better to pour the epoxy at night, pop the bubbles that showed up before going to bed-and then pop more in the morning before introducing it to the UV light. 
• Because we did not have any real sunny days during this craft, the Magic Gloss didn't set up very quickly-allowing more air bubbles to form and thus ruining the flat/clear surface. I imagine that a UV light lamp would cure the epoxy quicker-but either way, it's best to watch your work so as to take care of as many air bubbles as possible before the gloss cures.
• Printing on photo paper means that your paper wont absorb as much liquid/epoxy as normal paper. Each epoxy is different, but some do eat through regular paper and the colors may fade before curing.
• The smaller the bottle caps, the less amount of expensive Magic Gloss or other epoxy you will need to use. Less surface area or less depth to fill in will mean fewer chances for err-like air bubbles or lumps. But, if you add layers, like me, below the pictures, make sure to seal the edges really well. I had issues of extra air eventually rising to the surface because of air pockets under the picture/cardboard/foam sticker layers.

This was still a fun project, although I had a major learning curve. If you try this out, let me know how it went. This craft can be personalized in many ways: using personal photos, favorite sports team logos or players, pictures of favorite items, individual letters or favorite names/words, etc.

Have fun AND thanks for reading!