DIY Pop Art Magnets

I love magnets. I know it’s probably a weird thing to say but I think I like them so much because of my love of organising.

We have made a few magnets in the past (these DIY Concrete Letter Magnets and DIY Liquorice Allsorts Magnets) so thought it would be fun to make some more! After all, you can never have enough magnets!

This time we’ve opted for some DIY Pop Art inspired magnets. They’re really fun and colourful and best of all you can add personalised messages to these ones, too!

You only need a few supplies and even if they look a bit complicated to make it’s actually a really easy process.

This is what you will need to make your own DIY Pop Art Magnets:

Polymer clay (and an oven to bake it in) I always use Fimo which is a great quality and comes in tonnes of different colours.
Rolling pin (use one specifically for the polymer clay)
Craft knife and cutting mat
Sheet magnets (these are the ones we have – they’re pricey but super strong. They’re the best we’ve ever used and once you’ve tried them you’ll never want to use another magnet!)
Template (you can download the template we made for ours for free here)

If you want to have a reusable message area, you’ll also need:

Chalkboard paint
Paintbrush
Chalk or chalk pencil

This is how to make the DIY Pop Art Magnets:

#1 Download the template, print it and cut out the different shapes. You can make the magnets any shape and size you want but we found it easiest to use the template as a guide.

#2 Choose the clay colours you want to use and roll each colour out to roughly the size of the template. Ideally, you want the clay to be about 1-2 mm thick. Every piece of clay will be a different layer of the magnet.

#3 Place your template onto the clay and cut around it with a craft knife. Polymer clay looks exactly the same when baked (fingerprints and all) so make sure to work as neatly as you can.

#4 Layer your DIY pop art magnet by stacking the different pieces of clay that you’ve cut out and firmly press them together. Be careful not to squash it too much, though!

#5 Bake the shapes according to the instructions of the clay you’re using and let it cool down. If you find that your layers of clay didn’t stick together properly you can easily glue them back together with some craft glue.

#6 To create a speech bubble area for messages wait till your polymer clay shapes have completely cooled down. Then paint some of the chalkboard paint onto the top layer of the magnet and let it completely dry. (We applied two coats.)

#7 All that’s left to do is add the magnet. We used neodymium sheet magnets which are ideal for this project. They’re super strong, can really easily be cut to size and already have an adhesive back so that you just need to peel back the foil and stick it to the clay.

I’m really happy how these turned out and they definitely add a fun splash of colour to our note board. By adding messages (we used a soft chalk pencil to write them) you can really personalise them, too.