Timeless Decor Using Magnets - Now For Baby Room, Later For Boy's Room

by Lulu Dubin

$15

2 Hours

Easy

With the help of a smart friend I was able to come up with a way to create timeless pieces of decor in such a short time. The trick is using magnets! This project was done for something specifically made as a gift for my friend's baby's bedroom, keeping in mind that soon he will grow up to be a young boy and the baby accents won't be as relevant to his age anymore. But the same or similar project can be done as easily to make holiday pieces or gifts. Start out with something for Christmas, Hannukah, Winter, etc. and then a month later change it up to something different, yet equally as fun and beautiful!

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My friend recently bought and moved into a new apartment. I asked what she wanted as a house-warming gift and she said I should buy her a Mezuzah case for her son's room. (For anyone who's interested in knowing what a Mezuzah is, I posted an explanation at the end of the post). I said to myself, "buy one? I'll make one!" Then I decided to make one for my son too.

I bought plain ceramic mezuzah cases and some acrylic paint, and also some little wooden animal-shaped pieces to glue on to make it cutesy and appropriate for a baby's room.

I also wanted to paint the boys' names on but I was not very confident with my abilities to steadily paint out letters. So I bought sticker letters to use as a way of marking out the letters.

First I just placed the letter stickers on the ceramic where I wanted them.

Next, I painted a few coats of light blue acrylic paint over the whole thing, covering the letters. Then, once the paint was dry, I took a bubble paint with a fine-tip opening (to get nice fine letters) and painted over the letters. I used a dark blue, sparkled color.

Gavriel wanted to help, so I put on his Hometalk apron and gave him a paint brush and some construction paper :)

While it was drying I also painted a a wooden piece (it's a hebrew letter, Shin) to be placed at the top, as is traditionally done on mezuzas. Once everything was dry, I glued on the painted letter with E6000 and then covered the whole thing with a clear glaze varnish.

The next step was to lay out the little wooden animals to figure out the placement I wanted so that they wouldn't block the name or anything. But I had a dilemma. I knew putting cute little colorful animals would be cute for a baby, but I wanted this mezuzah to last for a long time and still be relevant to Noam 5 years from now. I asked a friend what she thought and she came up with an amazing idea to use velcro so that the pieces aren't permanent. I got SO excited about that concept and decided to use magnets, which I felt were a little stronger and easier to get in small pre-cut circles at my craft store.

So then I glued the magnets on to the animals. I glue each magnet while it was connected to another magnet. Since there was no visual way of detecting which face of the magnet was which, I wanted to keep them attached at all times so I wouldn't accidentally glue on the wrong side and be stuck with repellent accents that jump off the mezuzah.

Once I finished magnetizing and attaching the animals, I moved on to the little soccer pieces I bought.

IMPORTANT: I laid them out on top of the already existing magnets first so that I could see where exactly to place the magnets on the back. For the animals, I glued the magnet on in the middle for the most part, on the soccer ones, it was important that I glued them in a place where they would be nicely aligned, again as to not block the letters.

Here is the finished baby boy mezuzah

Here is the one he will be able to use in a few years. My friend loved it!

Hope you enjoyed this how-to. This is easily a method that can be used for any type of decor. From baby-to-kids to holiday-to-holiday and beyond.

For those of you who were interested to learn about a mezuzah...

A Mezuzah is a parchment inscribed with a biblical verse that is traditionally placed on every door post in Jewish homes. Sometimes they are put in plain white cases, but it's always fun to have a specially designed case to fit the decor/theme in a home/room. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezuzah)

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2 of 8 comments

Kira on Jun 22, 2015
@Lulu Dubin this is soooooo cute

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Jane on Jul 11, 2016
This is a very sweet idea, but I would encourage others to use velcro instead of these magnets which can be DEADLY for children. The magnets, should they come loose, are small enough to swallow and once inside can do serious damage.

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