Fridge at my previous house — lots of magnets!

Anyone who has been to my house knows that I love refrigerator magnets! My magnet collection is quite extensive — I have magnets from various countries we’ve visited, theme parks (mostly Disney ones!), broadway shows (e.g., Les Miserables, Wicked), National Parks, favorite restaurants, quotes, bottle caps, and so on. I also have a set of magnetic poetry and two sets of alphabet and number magnets.

At my old house my fridge (right) was pretty much covered in magnets. This was entertaining for me, but let’s be honest – it was pretty cluttered…

At my new house I have tried to keep my fridge a little more refined by only displaying some magnets at a time and rotating through my collection. Due to this attempt to be a little more grown up, since we moved in I have hardly used my alphabet magnets because they seem so wild on the fridge with all of their different colors. But having the alphabet around is so fun! So when I saw a pin on pinterest about painting alphabet magnets, I knew it was something I needed to do!

I decided to paint my two sets of alphabet magnets red! I use red as a fun accent color in my green and beige kitchen, so I thought it was the perfect choice. Matt had also requested a “fun” color! I picked up a can of plastic friendly, red, glossy spray paint and I got to work.

I was concerned about if the magnets would stick to whatever surface I painted them on, so I put them on a sheet of wax paper to paint them. This worked very well. The paint did get all over the wax paper, but the magnets just lifted right off the wax paper! I did a couple coats of paint… it was hard to get in a few of the small corners, so I moved around a lot when painting to try to get at those spots from different angles. I’m sure my paint job isn’t perfect, but they look good enough for me!

Painting them only took a few minutes and was pretty easy. Probably the hardest thing was laying them out before painting them! Also, I had been painting some other things too, so by the time I got around to the magnets, my right arm was actually shaking a little bit from all of the (oh-so-very) hard work of spray painting..! But aside from that, this really was a very simple project!

Now the magnets are finished and they are so happy to be back in my kitchen ready to be used!

I also decided that when not in use, extra letters and numbers should live in a bowl somewhere in the kitchen instead of the front of the fridge itself. My mom does this and I think it helps to contain the cluttered look quite a bit! Thanks for the inspiration, Mom!

Now, what fun messages should I spell out on the fridge today?!