Fingerprint Heart Magnets

July 24, 2024 Katie

These fingerprint heart magnets are adorable! I saw some magnets like this somewhere, and I thought it would be fun to make some with my kids. They are older, but they were all willing to help me out. I can’t imagine they’ll ever get old enough for me to not appreciate fingerprint art and crafts.

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I’ll start with the supply list.

Heavyweight paper (cardstock, mixed media, watercolor, etc)
Acrylic paint
Glass cabochons (25mm, 30mm, 35mm)
Diamond Glaze (or you could use ModPodge)
Magnets

I used watercolor paper because it’s what I had and could grab first. Mixed media paper would have worked great, as would cardstock. Also, I used white paper, but you could use any color. Cardstock in particular comes in tons of colors. I just didn’t think about that until now.

We used an assortment of acrylic paints I already had. I like acrylic paint because it lasts but is easy to clean up. Each kid chose a color. Well, my daughter chose three different shades of purple. I decided to take a turn after the kids were done, and I chose red, yellow, and blue, which gave me pretty rainbow hearts.

The first cabochons I bought came from Michaels. I was so excited to find them since they were very inexpensive (and I had a coupon). I discovered after I opened them, though, that they were slightly different sizes and not completely clear. Some were clearer than others, but none were big enough to cover the biggest hearts, and overall I didn’t feel like they were quite right.

Now, I have a bunch of 25mm cabochons from other projects, but they were a little too small. If I had done this when my kids were littler, they probably would have been perfect. But all of my kids have adult-sized fingers, so I needed something a little bigger. I settled on these 35mm cabochons, and they are perfect! Only a couple of hearts were a little too big, but again, that would not an be issue for smaller fingers.

My kids tended to put paint mainly on the tips of their fingers, so when they made the hearts, they were pretty small and not all that heart-like. They would fix that by using their paint-covered finger to draw more of a heart shape at the bottom. It worked!

It’s fun to see each kid’s style. My 6’5” 15-year-old used his little finger, while the rest of us used our index fingers.

We all pretty well covered the sheet of paper, and then once I figured out the cabochon situation, I moved on to the next step.

Some of the hearts were too close together for me to use all of them, so I chose my favorites. I put a little bit of Diamond Glaze on each cabochon before pressing it onto the heart and making sure it was centered the way I wanted it. After the first one, I had a good idea of how much glaze I needed to just cover the heart and not ooze out too much.

Once I’d covered all of the hearts I was going to, I put some heavy books on top and left them overnight. I think Diamond Glaze only takes a few hours to dry, so that should have been plenty of time.

Then I cut around each cabochon as closely as possible

The magnets I bought came with stickers, so I used those to attach the magnets, centering the magnets as well as I could. Had they not come with stickers, I would have used E6000 to glue them on.