Tag: DIY

DIY Magnetic Wall with Magwall SA

DIY Magnetic Wall with Magwall SA

When we moved into our current home there was a wall (correction, cupboard) in our Kitchen that was a real eyesore for me. Previous tenants had hung things up with double-sided tape, which they then obviously tried to remove and it had left horrible scratch marks everywhere. This surface quickly became our boys “art wall” (largely to cover up the scratched). They proudly come to me with their most precious creations and ask to put it up on the wall. Who am I to say no?

I came across Magwall whilst browsing the internet one day and was instantly mesmerized. MagWall is a high quality paint primer with metal properties that can transform your wall, and other surfaces such as glass and wood, into magnetic receptive surfaces. It has a fantastic range of magnetic products that can be used to createย  engaging, fun, educational environments around you. Their offering is absolutely perfect for young kids, schools or even corporate offices and their product range varies from shapes, educational maps, and even photographic magnetic paper to print your precious memories on. I knew instantly that i wanted to do something with this product in our home.

Let me begin by saying I haven’t even begun to do this product justice. I have visions of redoing the boys play room with a mountain style blackboard paint across one length of the wall. That’s future planning though, and would require a bit of reorganization in our home.

Instead, I took our blank bare kitchen wall/cupboard, which is the first thing you look at as you walk into the kitchen and transformed it into our family board/ memory wall. Now I am NOT a painter, In fact, I’m one of the most impatient people when it comes to finer details (ie: waiting for paint to dry in between coats). I was pleasantly surprised with just how easy the process was, and how quick the paint dried. I even got my handy helpers involved ๐Ÿ™‚

First coat of Primer

The process was pretty straight forward, I started by prepping the surface. This took a bit of elbow grease and some spirit vinegar, to remove any grease. I then took the Magnetic Paint Primerย ย and did three undercoats of this. This is the primer that creates the magnetic stick, after the third coat you can test it to see if your magnets stick. Mine did, so I didn’t bother with a third. Once that was dry i painted two coats of the blackboard chalk over it. The dry time in between was only about 2 hours, thankfully it dried to touch in about 30 minutes so i didn’t have to worry about the boys coming and putting their fingers into sticky paint.

I am so thrilled with the result. The cherry on top for me are the accessories. My family is literally scattered across the globe so when I came across the magnetic world mapย I knew I had to get my hands on that. I also have a variety of letters and numbers to leave special notes on the cupboard or to practice our alphabets with the boys. My 2-year-old has been practicing his shapes and colours and creating his own pictures with the shapes kit and I absolutely ADORE being able to print our precious memories onto a magnetic photographic paper.

Next on my list to buy would most definitely be the magnetic weekly planner. To be able to wipe off and easily adjust schedules would be a lot easier than writing it out on a pad of paper like we currently do. I also want to create a chore board for the boys.

So if you are looking to add a bit of fun into your home and create a unique feature, give Magwall a thought. It’s perfect for a feature wall of photos, a fun home classroom or bedroom for kids and corporate offices.

Here’s a little video from Magwall to inspire you:

 

What do you think? I even gave our old chalk board a new lick of paint.

Go on, get creative ! Keep your eyes open for a fantastic giveaway up on the blog soon.

 

Disclaimer: I received Magwall products to test and review.

DIY storage solution for Hot Wheels cars

DIY storage solution for Hot Wheels cars

Any mom of boys will relate to the frustration of finding little “Hot Wheels” or dinky cars lying about absolutely everywhere. Pick any one of my handbags and I can guarantee you will find a car of some sort in it. I find them everywhere, in my car, my bed side drawer, my under wear cupboard. We have dozens of the, yet at the same time, because they are all scattered everywhere you can never find them !

Hot Wheelsยฎ vehicles have been an ongoing favorite of collectors, car enthusiasts and racing fans of all ages. The brand is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, remains the number one selling toy brand in the world with more than 5 billion Hot Wheelsยฎ cars produced and 2 cars sold every second! I can officially say I have contributed to a large share of that with my boys ๐Ÿ™‚

Typically I hold their toys and cars in your standard large plastic storage boxes from a Plastic Land but I absolutely hate digging to find the smaller cars in amongst the sea of other toys. I have been wanting to create a storage solution for their cars for a while. Naturally on google, there are endless storage solutions for these little matchbox sized cars. I loved some of the book shelf styled ones, where the cars are displayed up on the wall, but i wanted something slightly more interactive. I was particularly drawn to the one created by Frugal Fun for boys as it doubles up as a “play station” as well as a storage solution. It’s also darn easy to make.

You can make it out of three things:

Toilet paper rolls, mailing tubes or PVC piping as I did.

Initiallyย I started off collecting the toilet roll inners but along the way i decided i wanted something a little more sturdy. I headed off to my nearest Mica and got 3 metres of PVC piping cut up for me it about 10cm sections. It literally cost me all of about R50 !

Using an old crate that I already had, I positioned the pipe pieces into the crate. If your crate is to deep for your pipe pieces you could easily attach a backing board into it to ensure the pipes all come out level and the cars don’t fall out the back.

I washed and lightly smoothed out the pipes with a soft sand paper (there were a few rough edges) and glued the pipes into the crate. I then made a super quick sign out of cardboard and nailed it into the top of the crate.

 

The entire project took me less than 20 minutes, to add in a little extra storage, we all know I am always extra, i glued a magnetic strip down the side of the crate. I had read somewhere that some hot wheels (with the metal bottoms) could stick to magnets. This didn’t work however so i cut small strips of magnetic tape and glued that to the bottom of some of the cars so they could stick to the strip, to increase the storage space.

 

 

Et Voila ! A super easy storage solution of all of your Hot Wheels ! Do you see the magnetic strip down the side? I love that part ๐Ÿ™‚ Now i could really get fancy and spray paint it black and silver i guess, but lets me honest, “ain’t no body got time for that” ๐Ÿ™‚