DIY: How To Easily Make Photo Magnets At Home?

Are you about to refresh your fridge with a batch of new photo magnets or are you looking for an original personal gift? Do you like DIY projects? Let's try to make your own fridge magnets all by yourself - with help from us! We've prepared a short video and a step-by-step guide with useful tips. Don't worry, everybody can do it and we are pretty sure you will be excited about the result. Plus, you can save some money.

Anna Navrátilová

Don't want to create?

Print photo magnets online

Starting at 1.99 USD per piece

What do you need and how much does it cost? 🧲 ✂️ 💸

There are definitely many ways how to do it. We chose the easiest way to make beautiful photo magnets at home exactly according to your ideas. Except for printed photos and magnetic foil, there are just a couple of tools you will need. You can easily find them at any stationery or art supplies store. So what do we need to prepare?

All we need: a cutting mat, self-adhesive magnetic foil, printed photos, scissors, X-Acto knife, ruler and a small rag.

✔️ Sheet of self-adhesive magnetic foil
The base is a 20 mil (0.5 mm) thick self-adhesive magnetic foil in 8.5″ × 11″ (A4) size. It's comfortable to work with and holds very well (not only) on the fridge.

💰 Set of 10 sheets of this foil costs around $12 and you can purchase it here.

💡 Tip: If you need a bigger piece of the foil, it's also sold as a 24″ (63.5 cm) wide roll.
💡 Tip: Did you know that there is also magnetic photo paper for home printers?

✔️ Printed photos
It doesn't matter if you prefer using various single photos or if you print multiple photos together on one page as we did. Depending on what your options are, you can print your photos yourself using your own printer, print them with us, or use any photo lab. A lot of them can print your photos while you wait. Photo kiosks in shopping centers and drugstores are also a quick solution, but the print quality is slightly worse.

💰 The price range of photo prints, as well as their quality, widely vary. Generally, printing small photographs (from about 3^1/4″ × 4″ to 4″ × 6″ ) costs from a few cents to $1. For an 8.5″ × 11″ (A4) photo print count on few dollars.

💡 Tip: Print small photos with us! You can also add text and emojis. 😉
💡 Tip: Revive photos you already have at home! Use a magnetic foil to attach an old school class photo, polaroids or Insta photos.
💡 Tip: Get inspired about how to use the magnets for creative play and learning with kids and download different sets of pictures for free in our article Playful Magnets For Kids + 7 FREE Photo Sets.

✔️ X-Acto knife and sharp scissors
A quality knife and sharp scissors are necessary! You can buy both in any stationery store or online.

💡 Tip: If you like DIY, we recommend the tools (knife and scissors) from the Japanese brand Olfa.

✔️ Cutting mat
There are dedicated cutting mats, but you can also use a piece of cardboard or plastic. But definitely do not cut the magnets directly on the table!

✔️ Ruler
If possible use a metal ruler as a plastic ruler can be easily damaged by the knife causing the cut to not be straight.

✔️ A piece of cloth
It is useful when sticking photos on the foil to avoid unnecessary fingerprints on the photo paper. You can use any smooth piece of cloth, such as a lens cleaning cloth.

Let's start! 👷‍♀️ 🖨️ 📐

Don’t be afraid, it isn’t as complicated as it might initially seem. Even kids can do this with ease and from our experience they get really excited by the process. Let’s have a look at how to do it. First, watch the first video and then follow our step by step procedure below.

👉 1. Remove the protective layer from the magnetic foil
Prepare all tools required and place the foil on the pad with sticky side up and peel off the protective layer of the sticker.

1. Place the foil on the mat with the adhesive layer face up and peel off the protective layer off the label.

👉 2. Stick photos
Carefully hold the photograph’s corners on one side and gradually run over through its entire surface with a small piece of cloth or rag so that both sides will connect to each other thoroughly. If you intend to place more photos on one foil, stick them one by one next to each other using the same procedure.

2. Carefully hold the photography’s corners at one side and gradually run over through it’s entire surface with small piece of cloth or rag so the the both sides will connect to each other thoroughly.

👉 3. Cut the magnets into the desired shapes
This is the tricky part where dexterity and patience is required the most. Angular magnets can be cut by using a retractable blade (don’t forget to start with a fresh new edge), for rounded shapes use scissors (properly sharpened). If you are an experienced DIYer and a cutting plotter is familiar to you, then you are a person of unlimited possibilities! But let’s not get sidetracked as this can be discussed in another article.

⚠️ Warning! Foils tend to stick and bleed color from their sides, so if you are going to do create more magnets, clean the scissor’s edges from time to time or replace a piece of the retractable blade.

Cut square magnets according to the ruler with the pull-out knife.

For round magnets and round-shaped magnets, use scissors - sharp if possible.

👉 4. Done! 🙌 🎉 🥂
That’s all fellow readers. And now the best part – you are ready to use the magnets as you wish! Place them on the fridge, sheet metal boards, door frames, or wrap them up as a present for someone important to you.

Done! We created a lot of different shapes including heart, bubble or star shaped (picture in the middle) – which was the toughest one to cut out properly.

Love the magnets, but still feel like not doing it? 🤔 💡 ✌️

The combination of personal photos and handmade magnets represent an original and priceless gift, but if you still don't feel confident enough to do it by yourself or you just lack the necessary patience, we have great news for you! Squared.one is at your service to fulfill all your photo magnet needs!

How to proceed? Visit our online photo lab website and choose photo magnets. Choose a desired shape, upload the photos (from your PC, phone or directly from Instagram) and add a white or colored frame if wanted. Check the preview, pay the order and Squared.one team will take care of the rest!

We produce square and round photo magnets with a diameter of 2^3/4″ or magnetic jigsaw of nine pieces of 2″ × 2″. We also cut them out of a flexible magnetic foil, but in a better quality of 30 mil (0.7 mm). We create photos professionally in a classic way on top-of-the-range Fuji paper with a glossy surface.

💰 Square and round magnets are for $1.55/piece (minimum order 9 pieces) and the puzzle costs $9.95. Worldwide shipping costs $5 for 🚚 Economy USPS service or $10 for ✈️ FedEx Priority shipping and is free of charge for orders over $50 (33 magnets).

💡 Tip: FedEx Priority shipping is pretty fast delivery option! 2-3 working days to US, 3-4 to Canada and Australia.
💡 Tip: Do you need photo magnets as a gift? Surprise him and download his/her Instagram photos. How to do it, we've described in article How To Download Pics From Instagram.

🤚🤚 If you are not completely manual, don't despair: Even without work, there are cakes! So, at least in the field of magnets 😊

I'd better leave it up to you - let's go for photo magnets effortless! 👨‍💻

Final comparison ⚖️ ➕ ➖

To make or not to make? That's the question! Choose home production or order photo magnets online? Finally, we briefly summarize the advantages and disadvantages of both options.

Handmade Photo Magnet	Photo Magnets from Squared.one
⏱️ The creation itself takes about 1-2 hours, depending on the amount and difficulty of the shapes. But it's necessary to count enough time to prepare and print photos, purchase foil and all tools.	⏱️ Uploading photos and making an order takes about 10 minutes, worldwide priority shipping 3-4 days, economy 5-10 days.
💰 One magnetic foil sheet 8.5″ × 11″ (A4) costs $1.20, same sized photo around $3. Of course, the final price of one magnet depends on how well you are equipped and how many images you fit on the page. You can save money by using photos or pictures you already have at home.	💰Square and round magnets cost $1.55 (minimum order 9 pieces), magnetic puzzle $9.55. Worldwide shipping costs $5 or $10.
➕	➕
👍 You can create magnets of any shape and size, exactly to your imagination.	👍 Beautiful photo magnets simply after a few clicks, no needed knowledge about working with photos (rotate, crop).
👍 Magnetic foil is a very friendly material to work with and so children can participate in production.	👍 Intuitive and simple editor, possibility to add white or colored frame.
👍 Creative, fun, joy and feeling of pride guaranteed!	👍 Quick production and delivery time, you can have your magnets worldwide in 4–5 days.
👍 A great way to use not only photos but also various pictures, postcards, clippings ...	👍 We produce magnets from professionally developed photos on quality 30 mil (0.7 mm) thick magnetic foil.
👍 If you are well equipped, you will get a very original and inexpensive gift.	👍 You get the magnets packed in our original design box.
➖	➖
👎 It can take a while, especially the preparation and photo printing, purchase of material and tools.	👎 There are only 3 clearly defined formats to choose from: square, circle, jigsaw puzzle.
👎 Hand trimmed and cut-out magnets will never have such nice and straight edges.	👎 A disadvantage could be a minimum of 9 pieces of magnets for ordering.
👎 If you would like to create some special shape magnets as heart, speech bubble or star you need to know how to use some sort of graphics software.

So, what is your choice? Will you try to make new fridge magnets all by yourself?
Let us know how you succeeded - Show us your magnets on Instagram hashtagged with #squaredone! ❤️ 🧲 👌

Have you ever made your own photo magnets at home before? Do you have any gadgets or tip? let us know, we will be pleased to update this article.