Anthro or industrial? magnet board

Seems like these days, a lot of our pictures never make it off the computer.  They remain on the disk drive, cell phone, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, wherever.   So make sure you're backing up your computer or at least the My Pictures folder (or wherever you're storing yours)!

My daughters needed some place to display the Zapps pictures from the events they attended.   A nice big bulletin board or something like that to also add some decoration or interest to the almost bare walls of the house would be great!

I thought those cabinet doors from the Habitat Restore would be perfect for a magnet board for pictures.   There's not a lot of pictures of my DIY here, but hopefully you get the "picture" :).

Just give them a coat of primer first thing. 

Then I painted on the color that I want the trim to be.  The color gray is so popular now and I thought the college crowd would like it.  This is called Elephant Gray. 

Sheet metal can be found at Lowe's in a 2'x3' piece for less than $10.  I took it to a local sheet metal shop and they cut it to the sizes I needed.  The cuts were crisp with no crinkles or bends, nice!

The one on the right has the primer/trim painted.  The one on the left has the metal inside the frame, attached with Gorilla glue.

I sanded the edges of the frame to give them a distressed look.  With the gray color from the trim and the gray/silver sheet metal, it kind of has an industrial look which I wasn't crazy about. 

Adding a few smiling faces using some pretty magnets should perk these right up!

.
Unfortunately, when I'm visiting Tuscaloosa, I can never remember to take a picture of them hanging on the wall!

This year my neices have moved to T-town and I had one more cabinet door with sheet metal to fit.  So I finished it as a little house warming gift for them.

After the primer, I spray painted it with "cherry red".  Whoa, was it bright!   Now, I wasn't going for a "crimson" color here.   I'm sure if I wanted crimson, all I have to do is look on the shelves for that color.  And if crimson is not one of the color choices, they're definitely missing out on some sales!  This color was just too bright.

So I started trying to tone it down a bit and washed on some of the elephant gray. 

I took a damp cloth and dipped it in the gray paint and rubbed it on.   I kept dipping and rubbing and letting it dry until I was satisfied that it wasn't too "cherry".

For the magnets, I used some gems from Michael's.  Not the irredescent ones, they need to be clear.  Using Modge Podge, I attached decorative paper or scrapbook paper to the flat side of the gem.

I got a tip from one of my crafty friends about using an old magazine as a work surface for glue projects.  This works great if the project is smaller than the magazine page size.   When you're done, you just tear off that page and have a clean page to work on.

This works great for glue stick projects such as cardmaking or scrapbooking.  When using a glue stick, the glue WILL get off the card and then the card ends up sticking to the work surface.  So you constantly need a "clean" surface.  With a magazine as a work surface, you just flip to the next page to continue with the card or scrapbook project.

Anyway, that was my crafty tip for the day!  

Glue magnet discs to the back of the gems once the paper has dried.

The magnets are ready to go!

Now ready to hang on the wall, here's the cherry-gray-distressed version. 

Hopefully, it has a little more "Anthropologie" look than industrial!

Now just add pictures! 

Sharing at: