Rock Monster Magnets

These colourful little dudes will brighten even the dullest of kitchen appliances...also great for magnetic note boards and such like.

Now you can finally do something with all those pebbles you (eh hem, I mean, your kid's) collect at the beach.

Here's a little project you can do with your own little monsters.

Step 1) Collect some pebbles

River rocks, beach stones or pebbles are all good for this project. Medium sized are best. Too big and they will need super strong magnets to stay on the fridge, too small and they will be too fiddly to paint. 3 - 5cm diameter is a good size.

White or light coloured stones are easier to paint and the smoother the better for the same reason.

Step 2) Have a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits.

What do you mean what has this got to do with making pebble magnets? Just make sure you follow the steps! ;)

Step 3) Gather your materials

You are going to need:

Pebbles
Acrylic paints
Medium sized and small paint brushes
Small Magnets
Strong (or Super) Glue
Fine tipped black permanent marker pen(sharpie)

Step 4) Paint those pebbles.

We used acrylic paints. They are great for painting on pebbles and really durable.

We used a brand called DEKA Lack, which we got locally here in Cyprus. Any acrylic paints will do the job though. In fact you could even use water based kid's paints if you are not too fussy about the paint job. Sometimes it's the taking part and creating that is really the main objective anyway!

We painted 2 coats on each side of the pebbles (allowing drying time between coats) for a nice deep coloured shiny finish.

Step 5) Monster Faces

This is where your fine marker pen comes in verrrryy handy. You can use a paintbrush and paint if you have a super steady hand, but a pen makes it much easier.

Draw or paint a monster expression on your pebbles remembering to leave some space for their eyes. Let your imagination run wild a lil' bit, or just copy some of our expressions (above). I like the toothy grins best. This blue one at the bottom looks a bit like my own little monster who has just lost a front tooth!

Step 6) Googley eyes.

We opted for googly eyes to give our rock monsters a little bit of character, but you could paint some eyes if you prefer.

I bought these eyes from an ebay seller. I think it was 200 eyes for 99p and a quid postage. They also sell them in craft shops, Homebargains and the kid's craft sections of Asda and Tesco super cheaply.

I asked the children to place the eyes, one two and even 3!, and then I glued them myself with some really strong glue. Strong glue and children obviously not a good combination so this is a job for super mum.

Don't the eyes just make the faces?

I let the glue dry over night (follow the instructions on whatever glue you are using for drying times).

Step 7) Magnets

So now you have your cute looking pebbles all painted, it's onto the magnets. I bought some circular magnets from ebay (about £4 incl. postage for 200). They need to be quite strong, but not the seriously strong ones which will have you stuck in a corner with every metalic object in your kitchen cabinets pinning you to the floor. Mine were for holding up to 30g which seems to work great. I used my industrial strength 'E-6000' glue for this job, as it obviously needs a really secure hold to prevent ripping the magnet from the pebble when moving it around the fridge.

I stuck 2 magnets to some of the bigger, heavier stones, just to be sure they wouldn't slip down the fridge with the weight. TopTip - If you are going to glue 2 magnets side by side, make sure first that you have them facing the right way to 'attract to one another and not 'repel' one another. Speaking from experience you can end up in rather a sticky mess if you don't!

I left the glue overnight to dry as a good bond is really essential here.

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