Block Magnets

I made some new refrigerator magnets for our family. 

I found big packs of baby blocks in the Target dollar bin awhile back and spontaneously bought them. I didn't have a plan at the time, but once I got them spread out in the craft room, I immediately thought about making monogrammed magnets for the fridge. 

I pulled out a C, S and T. A few things struck me right away. First, I didn't like that the heavy grain of the wood dominated the yellow painted section of the C or that it caused color variation in the T. I found the letters and pictures on the remaining sides of the block distracting. And finally, I couldn't leave the S red, because in our family red automatically means it's mine. Because family colors.

Fixing the T was the easiest, so I started there. Blue is Trevor's family color, so all I needed to do was to even out the color. A blue Sharpie did the trick.

Next, the C. My family color is red, and I was cautiously optimistic that a red Sharpie would cover the yellow paint. Sure enough. With a solid coat of red, the offending grain on the C receded nicely into the background.

I knew that a green Sharpie wasn't going to work over the red S, so I got out my acrylic paint and a fine brush. I gave the block two coats to get nice coverage.

When the S was dry, I used a foam brush to paint the remaining five sides of each block in black. While that was drying, I cut a large refrigerator magnet (the kind restaurants give away) down to make three squares that perfectly fit my blocks. I used a strong craft glue to attach the magnets to the blocks. 

Easy, cute and fun!