Easy Magnetic Grocery List

I love snacking, and raiding the fridge for quick eats is always a favorite. While I might be a master food felon, I'm not always diligent about remembering to jot down the items I pilfer - especially when it's the last one.

While munching on my ill-gotten cheese string and staring at the magnets on my fridge, I was wondering how I could make my eating habits more accountable..that's when it hit me: a magnetic grocery list!

Since there's only a handful of items I usually reach for in the fridge, all of which are grocery store staples, I figured it would be easy to make a graphical representation of these refrigerated regulars and then make them magnets. You can probably already see how I made them from the title image, but I'll go through the steps just in case.

here's what I used to make my own easy magnetic grocery list:

• Magnetic sheet
• Spray adhesive
• Color computer printer + regular printer paper
• Scissors

Ready to be a snacking superhero? Let's make!

I did a search for food icons to see what was out there. I found some simple representations of refrigerator staples, and used images that had bright and cheery colors.

My searching lead me to harvest most of my images from these two websites.

I took all the images I wanted to use and put them into an image editor. You'll only need very basic functions for this project, so consider Pixlr: a FREE web based image editor.

Whatever program you use, you'll need to start with a new work space that's the same size as the paper in your printer. Then, paste and arrange the icons so they all fit on the page at the size you want.

Some of the images I collected had a black border around them. These borders are easily removed, whatever photo editing program you're using.

All photo editing programs will have a selection tool that allows you to click an area to make a selection. Choose this tool and move the threshold up to it's highest setting, allowing not only the black border to be selected but also the blurred rasterized area between the border and colored image.

Make the selection in all the areas where there are black borders, and then delete the selections to remove the borders.

With the borders remove and the images arrange on your page, print the page to your home printer using regular computer paper.

Print the image sheet from your home printer. If you can see any black border, it's no big deal.

Any artifacts of the black border will be trimmed up later with scissors when the images are placed onto the sheet magnet.

Using scissors, the images were roughly cut from the printer paper. It's important not to cut too closely to the shape of the images, since the fine trimming will happen after the images are glued to the magnetic sheet.

The magnetic sheet I used was very thin, about 1mm thick.

Super 77 is a great spray adhesive for craft projects like this. This adhesive can be used a few different ways, but to get a secure and permanent bond both surfaces need to be coated in the spray and left to dry for a few minutes.

Once both surfaces are coated and tacky to the touch (about 5 minutes after spraying), the pieces can be stuck together sticky sides facing each other.

Press the pieces to the magnetic sheet to ensure a good bond.

The pieces were arranged on the sheet to ensure the maximum amount of coverage.

Once the glue has bonded it's time to cut out the pieces.

Using sharp scissors, cut around each icon to remove the image on a magnet. Here's where you can use the scissors to cut inside any remaining black borders from when you copied the image to your photo editing program.

Your shopping list is ready to stick on the fridge. I used the magnetic sheet to also make a title of "grocery list" to keep things organized. The item magnets are arranged wherever on the fridge, and then moved to under the grocery list header when I need a reminder to order things from fridge (usually from a late night snack).

Have you made your own magnetic grocery list? I want to see it!

Happy making :)