Weddingbee Blog

Like many other brides, I too wanted save-the-date magnets. Simple, effective, and might just prevent Aunt June from sneaking another bite of Ben & Jerry’s from the freezer.

Designed in Illustrator, they’re as large as I could make them while still being able to fit them in a 4-bar envelope. I also wanted the finished product to be hefty and not bend.

I thought about using Vistaprint, but there were a few drawbacks:

1. I only needed 60 save the dates.
2. The closest size they offered would need to be trimmed down.
3. Their magnets were only 0.4mm thick.

I looked around at other vendors that made heavier weight custom magnets, but the minimum was usually around 250. My matron of honor made magnets for her wedding and was quite successful, so if she could do it, so could I.

After a few trips to Michaels armed with 40%-off coupons, I acquired the following:

• A pad of watercolor paper
• A few packs of 8 1/2” x 11” magnet sheets
• Heavy-duty spray adhesive
• Clear adhesive-backed sheets (I’ve used Dura-Lar in the past, but they didn’t have them so I picked up “C Thru Better Letter Self Adhesive Laminating Sheets” instead.)

Armed with all my supplies, I got to work, but not without making several mistakes along the way and being too stubborn to change my approach. Did our guests love them? Yes. Did they notice my oopsies? No. But you can certainly learn from where I went wrong.

1. Watercolor paper + laser printer = no bueno. I should have known better. Watercolor paper has a wonderful texture; it’s what I envisioned printing our invitations on, and I wanted consistency between them and our save the dates. Unlike inkjet printers, lasers fuse toner to the paper via heat. Because of the noticeable tooth, the toner in the recessed parts wasn’t heated sufficiently and began rubbing off if I didn’t handle them carefully. My advice—use hot-pressed water paper or another smooth textured heavyweight paper on a laser printer. If you want cold-pressed paper (the kind I bought), use an inkjet, but be aware you’ll blow through a lot more ink and fine details are prone to blurring.
2. When it’s time to laminate, make sure your work area is super clean. The sheets are dust magnets. I only peeled a little of the backing off at a time and used a brayer to prevent air bubbles. I still managed to get dust spots on a few. Don’t try removing them with an X-Acto—it’ll only make things worse.
3. That pesky tooth came back to bite me again. Much like the toner, the Dura-Lar wasn’t completely flush over the recesses in the paper, so some parts looked a little fuzzy. Braying them like a mofo solved this problem, but only temporarily.