How to Make Dinosaur Magnets

 Last year, I made some simple push pins a little more decorative by covering plastic farm animals in nail varnish and gluing the two together:

I was really pleased with the little decapitated heads, so I when I saw this pack of dinosaurs for £2 in my local ‘The Range’, I snapped them up to add a bit of prehistoric pretty to my magnetic noticeboard:


Made in a very similar way, I began by separating the heads from the bodies with nail scissors.  These figures had pre-defined joins that made this process much easier, but the figures were hollow, so didn’t really require anything stronger to cut through them [but if you want to save your nail scissors, any standard scissors will do]:


Once separated, I balanced the parts vertically to fill with PVA glue.  This is to give the magnets something to hold on to a little later on.  Leave the glue to dry for around 24 hours and after this time, the glue will have dried and sunk a little.  Top them up and leave to dry overnight:

Finally, you will have a solid base on which to attach your magnets.  The magnets I already have are a little too large for the figures, so I picked up a pack of small magnetic circles from the craft shop for around £2.50:

Glue your magnets in place and they are ready to hold your most important lists, letters and tickets:

If your response to the glue drying is ‘aint nobody got time for that’, I would suggest filling the hollow with blue tack, tissue or anything that will fill the space – this will hold your magnet in place without the need for any glue and provides a non-permanent solution too!  [Make sure your magnet can take the weight though]

see you next time x