How-To's Day: MAKE Magnetic Mini Note Pads

This project is an excellent way to use small scraps of paper or to put the backside of fliers/ random paper to good use as well as cereal boxes and old cards... The possibilities are endless!!!

I have been making a round of address books recently and I figured out this clever trick to make super easy mini note pads for the fridge or other magnetic surfaces. When we have Etsy Sales from Our Shop we do promotions and give out free gifts when people let us know how they found our shop. I am always looking for small inventive items that can really embody the spirit of our shop to add in our gift bags.

If you have (20) small scraps of paper already this project should take you under 3 minutes!!! If not, don't worry- it shouldn't be much more than that to have one done. :)

Left Side: Some pages can be bigger or smaller as seen--just make sure they are close in size. Stack together. If you must you can staple to keep them all organized, but I like to staple mine at the end.

Right Side:  Utilizing an old box I cut a rectangle the same size only ~1" taller for the flap for the magnet(s) and to contain the pages.

*** If you don't have small scraps cut already this is the perfect project to utilize a paper stash.  Once a month I collect all the old fliers and paper items we have used and put them in a pile to use for projects like this. A piece of paper can yield 32 pieces if you fold it up and cut it as small as possible. 32 squares out of an 8 1/2"X 11" piece of paper makes the smallest size before it is almost too tiny***  

Using powerful and tiny neodymium rare earth magnets for this project is ideal.  They are super great because they are really strong! For most of the smaller pads you probably only need one magnet in the middle, but I tested the wider one with two magnets closer to the corners.

Left Side:  Awesome part of using an old cereal box- I used the back and side utilizing the crease for the flap. Figure out where the pages hit at the top and put the magnet slightly higher so that the pages sit flushed as seen in.

Right Side: Hot glue the magnet down onto the cardboard with a light amount of glue and glue down over the pages.

You can use the glue and pinch close the note pad or you can go light on the hot glue and staple under the magnet and onto the pages:

Note: I used (2) small 1/4" diameter Neodymium Rare Earth Magnets in the bigger pad on the bottom 
and (1) 1/4" magnet in the top smaller pad.

Just looking at these two you can see how different a series of pads can be. A fun challenge is to set out to make 5-10 pads and test out different ways to decorate them a little collectors series. When decorating the note pads I glued leftover strips of maps to bring in more colors and cover the staples. Some variations can be made by using old postcards for the back instead of old boxes. Or, create some super goodies to put in your Etsy sales over the holidays by using old Christmas card fronts as the sturdy back.

There might not be enough space to tell your life's story on, but they have the perfect amount of room to say what's important. :)

This post got a little condensed- I was nervous about how long jury duty would be yesterday and wanted to post yesterday. I ended up working on a "meaty outline" and got a ton of it ready to post today and somehow it got lost. :( Usually the auto save is pretty good on Blogger, but I think reverting back and forth from the saved version I just happened to close it without saving. Ugh. Anyway, if anything need more explanation please feel free to contact me for clarification.

XOXO,

KC