How to make super simple sticker magnets

It all started with this Minion sticker. My daughter has a Despicable Me album with stickers that you collect and trade, then she plays with any extras that she has. Her little brother stuck this Stuart sticker onto a cabinet. While we allow the kids to write on the walls (want to see some of the Minion wall art in our home?), we don’t allow stickers on furniture. I quickly peeled it off and stuck it onto this extra magnet that we had. (It was the inside part of one of those picture frame magnets.) The kids loved it so I figured we could make some more sticker magnets, just to add to our collection of artwork magnets and upcycled magnets.

You really can’t get much easier than this and if you happen to have thin cutable magnets and stickers hanging around, it’s a totally free kid craft activity using upcycled materials that can be played with for years.

Gather your magnets. They need to be the type you can cut. I had a few of those cheap freebie advertising magnets hanging around.

Pick out some stickers from your kids’ collection. I told my daughter to choose her favorite stickers which were on the larger side and with simple shapes. We agreed to a few more complicated ones that she liked a lot.

Stick the stickers onto the front side of the magnets. (Then notice how long and dirty your child’s fingernails are.)

Try to position the stickers like a puzzle so you can get more in. If you start with larger ones, you can fit the smaller ones in afterwards.

We managed to fit in a pretty good amount of stickers.

If any of your magnet makers starts getting bored, just set him up with some homemade cloud dough/moon sand while you continue with the other magnet makers. (Believe it or not, that’s still the same moonsand that we made in that post two years ago! The stuff lasts forever… that is until certain little boys dump most of it onto the floor…)

Cut out around the sticker shapes. Most stickers have an empty colored space around the main image. If you cut inside this space you can usually cut straighter lines than if you were cutting perfectly along the sticker’s edge. My 7-year-old daughter cut out the ones that were on the thinner magnets while I tackled the harder-to-cut thicker magnets.

And that’s it! Easy, right?

Now let your kids play to their hearts’ delight! They can make up stories, moving the pieces around. My daughter made a little sticker town and decided to dress up some of the magnets. Which gave me a whole new fun magnet idea which I’m sure we’ll get around to one of these rainy winter days!