Vintage Jewelry DIY Magnets

Happy 2015! How did you ring in the new year? Recently, I have been spending my days doing things I love outside of teaching like reading, crafting, cooking, and spending lots of time with the fam while on my winter break from school. Which leads me to my post today. While this is not strictly a "teaching" blog post, I would argue that it is in fact very educational. :) Like my fellow teachers, I do indeed have a whole life outside of my four classroom walls, so I thought it only appropriate that while on break from school, I blog about what I have been up to.

An avid antique collector, I just love that whole vintage feel. Ever since I stalked repeatedly visited a tutorial on Pinterest, I have been wanting to make magnets out of old jewelry. With a little hot glue and creativity, check out my refrigerator's new digs.

If you are interested in making your own, it's super simple! Follow these four easy steps.

1) Gather vintage jewelry and supplies listed below:

• Vintage jewelry (bought or found)--broken parts and pieces are perfect!
• A pair of wire cutters or needle-nosed pliers
• Hot glue gun & glue
• Magnets

Since you are turning this vintage jewelry into magnets, you probably don't want to use anything too expensive or of sentimental importance/value. I actually went to a large warehouse and bought antique jewelry anywhere from 50 cents for a mixed batch to a few bucks per piece. And get excited, BROKEN JEWELRY works the best! Often times at antique booths, you can buy baggies of it on the cheap. Clip-on earrings, focals (such as pendants off of necklaces), pins, lockets, really any piece or part will do.

Once you have your supplies, you are ready for step #2.

2) Prepare vintage jewelry for becoming a magnet. This is where you can get crazy crafty or keep it real simple depending on your desire to be artsy. On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being, "I would rather scour the bathroom floor at the mere mention of glitter," and a 10 being, "I could bedazzle each and every wall of Buckingham Palace ALL DAY!" I was at a solid 7 this particular afternoon. But no worries, I have given multiple examples at varying level of difficulty for you to follow that will hopefully give you some relief OR inspiration for wherever you fall on "The Official Scale of Desire to Do Arts and Crafts."

If you want to keep it easy-peasy, find a piece of jewelry that requires absolutely no prep. Then, all you have to do is hot glue a magnet to the back. For example, check out this beautiful broken mini mosiac pin I found. The pin was already broken off of the back, so it was inexpensive and needed no preparation. Some hot glue and a magnet later, and voila! Now this beauty decorates my fridge.

Clip-on vintage earrings are another simple magnet to assemble. Usually, you need to just pry the clip-on backing off of it and glue a magnet in its place. Here is a cool pair I found at the warehouse. I used wire cutters to clip off the dangling pieces, remove the backing, and then glued those clipped-off pieces in the center to fill it out a bit more.

Combining bits and pieces can get really fun. Here is a broken pin, bracelet, and pendant I reorganized. I turned the pin upside-down and used its back as the front. Then, I cut the flowers off of the bracelet to glue on the pin's points and put the broken pendant in the center. Now, it's a work of art!

Here's another example of some parts and pieces that I glued together to make finished pieces. The image on the left is a turquoise pendant that has a broken jewelry part glued to its center. The middle image is a broken earring (the green circular piece) with a clump of pearls (I don't know from what piece of original jewelry this came from) stuck in the middle. The right image is a heart locket glued inside of a picture frame locket. See what I mean about broken jewelry being amazing?!

Lastly, when it comes to preparing your vintage jewelry to become magnets, think outside of the box! Here is an old medal that came in a bag of jewelry I bought. I didn't even know what it was at first. Then, I read the inscription. "2nd Place Calculus Team 1990." Who says 2nd place isn't great? I glued a vintage button to the medal's flat side, cut the loop off of its top, and now so it sits on my fridge as pictured on the right.

The preparation of the jewelry is the time-consuming part. Once you have all of your creations planned, steps 3 and 4 are quick.

3) Use a hot glue gun to adhere magnets to the back of your jewelry. I recommend buying individual ceramic magnets vs. the flexible roll that you cut your own from. You need a firm magnet that is strong. I bought varying sizes at a Michael's craft store.

4) Place your magnets on a magnetic surface, and enjoy! I am personally benefiting from step 4 right now as I FINALLY hung up my stack of Christmas cards that had been sitting in a sloppy pile.

The Christmas cards now look great and so do the magnets!