I felt the need to make something a little more permanent than a piece of paper with “Dirty” written on it being used with a fridge magnet on my dishwasher. So I made a tag to convey the message. The Dollaro side would indicate dirty, and Chevre would indicate clean.
The brown dollaro was about 1mm thick, and the grey chevre sully was about 0.9mm. I cut out a rectangle of each at full thickness. I cut scraps out about 3x the length and width of the magnet’s diameter and skived them down to 0.5mm.
On a piece of cardstock I applied some sticky tape. Any surface that would allow glue to easily be lifted off would do. I scuffed all parts of the magnet and wiped off the dust. Then I applied a layer of glue (Aquilim 315) to one face of the magnet and in the centre of the skived pieces. When both glued surfaces were tacky I place the magnet in the middle. I applied glue to the sides of the magnet once one face was stuck on.
Important point to note: The magnets will be back to back, so think carefully on which side is being glued down and will be “outside” and make sure the poles attract where magnets will touch and be sewn together
Inner construction of the tag
Next was time to mold the leather over the magnet. I turned the scrap piece over and placed it on my DIY non-stick surface, and with a bonefolder carefully molded the leather over the magnet, being careful not to stretch the leather too much, and being careful to remove all creases.
On the larger tags I punched a hole in where I wanted my magnet to go, dry fitted it over the covered magnet to make sure it would be the correct size (it wasn’t, I needed to increase the hole diameter by 1-2mm), then paint the inside of the hole. Crease the hole (I forgot to) and mark the stitch line with a divider. Scuff the grain side of the scrap that would be glued to the flesh side of the larger piece, glue both sides and stick. Hammer it down for a good adhesion. Carefully peel the entire unit off the non-stick surface and use something to keep the magnet in place (here I used nylon reinforcement tape), Punch the holes that will keep the magnet leathers together and stitch.
When both tags are ready you can glue just the edges, or laminate the whole thing together. Cut out a clean shape, I used a rectangle with radiused corners. I applied a single layer of edge paint to hold a clean edge, heated it in, then marked my stitches and stitched all the way around. Last step was painting the edges again.
