Make your own photo magnets

Materials needed

• Magnetic paper glossy or Magnetic paper matt
• Sharp scissors or cutter knife
• Cutting mat
• Metal ruler
• Laser or inkjet printer
• Computer with picture editor, e.g. Photoshop

Preparing the photos
Put together a selection of your favourite pictures for your photo magnets in Photoshop or another picture editor, e.g. Gimp or Coreldraw. Select DIN A4 photo size, 300dpi printing quality, and CMYK colour space. Use the space on the template and arrange photos in a space-saving manner. You can rotate photos for that purpose.

Printing on magnetic paper
Use manual paper feed and adjust the printer to "heavy paper" (at least 160 g). Print one sheet of magnetic paper at a time to avoid a paper jam.

Cutting out
We recommend using a ruler, cutter, and cutting mat for a precise cutting out.

Tip: To change things up, leave a thin white frame around the photo.

Tip: Instead of printing photos on magnetic paper, you (or your kids) can also draw and write on it with markers or crayons and then cut out the shapes. Now you can use them as photo magnets.

Addition from Benjamin Graf (Switzerland):

I work with magnets often and come up with various ideas. This time I had the idea of transforming especially beautiful photos into self-adhesive deco objects as give-aways or for sale.

These photo magnets adhere nicely to metal surfaces such as this waste-paper basket or a fridge or magnetic board.

Printing and "magnetising" the photos
You can make your own photo magnets very easily: Print the selected photos on A4 photo paper. The menu of the print assistant allows you to select the quantity and composition of photos. You can print, for instance, nine different photos or nine times the same picture. I don't recommend using normal paper, because the photos don't come out that well.

Then take a sheet of the self-adhesive magnetic sheet, also available in A4 format, peel off the protective foil and carefully press your printed photo paper on the self-adhesive side.

Now cut out the individual photos with scissors or a cutter. And there you have your very own magnetic pictures!

Instead of using your own photos you can use postcards or something similar as well and glue it directly on the magnetic sheet.

Note from the supermagnete team: More tips and tricks for photo magnets are documented in the Supermagnete chronology application.