Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Yarn Magnets

A few months ago, I saw a blog post on the Yarnista blog. She showed a picture of some great yarn magnets and I decided to try my hand at making them for my swap partner in the Itty Bitty Teddy Bear Picnic Swap.

I thought I would do a demonstration on how I put them together. Warning, this post has a lot of pictures.

Supplies
  • Scrap Yarn
  • 2 Toothpicks
  • 1" Styrofoam ball
  • 2 seed beads (large enough to fit on the end of the toothpick)
  • Magnet


Tools:
  • Glue (I used a hot glue gun)
  • Scissors or other cutting implement


The first step is to wrap the Styrofoam ball with yarn. Once you get started, it is just like winding a regular ball of yarn. Continue until the Styrofoam is covered.

It will start out something like this:


And finish something like this:



Put a dab of glue on the back of the magnet and glue it onto the ball of yarn, making sure that you secure the end of the yarn leaving a little tail.


To make the knitting needles, start by trimming the end of the toothpick so that it won't stick out the end of the bead. You don't need to trim off too much.


Dab the trimmed of the toothpick in a bit of glue and stick the bead on the end.


Push the ends of the toothpicks through the yarn ball and snip the ends of the toothpick so they aren't so sharp.


Trim the end of the yarn and hang the magnet on your frig with pride!