Snail fridge magnets
We made a bunch of snail fridge magnets. The spiral shells were made by casting Plastimake into sea shells. We also embedded a small magnet in the bottom of each snail so it sticks to the fridge door. Here's how you can make some too:
Make the snail's spiral shell
- Find a suitable sea shell. We discovered that most snail-like sea shells with round openings work well (as pictured below). Avoid shells with complex spirals or small openings - you won't be able to get your Plastimake out once it cools!
- Drill a small hole at the tip of the shell so that air can escape from behind the Plastimake when you push it into the shell.
- Drop the shell in hot water for a minute. Casting into a warm shell allows you more working time as the Plastimake will take longer to cool down.
- Add a tiny drop of olive oil (or any other kind of lubricant) inside the shell.
- Push warm Plastimake into the shell. You'll need to work quickly to fill the shell with Plastimake before it cools. Leave about 10cm of Plastimake poking outside of the shell. This will act as a handle and make it much easier to remove the spiral from the shell.
- Allow it to fully cool before attempting to remove the spiral. Depending on the shape of the shell you should be able to "unscrew" it quite easily. Because you can remove the Plastimake without damaging the shell, you can keep casting into the same shell again and again.
- Use a sharp blade to cut the Plastimake handle off the spiral.
Make the snail's body
Any kind of magnet will work, however we prefer to use ultra strong Neodymium magnets. You can order Neodymium magnets online in Australia at frenergy.com.au or on eBay.
- Form a small slug-like shape out of Plastimake.
- Push a magnet into the bottom of the slug and fold Plastimake over the top so that it's concealed.
- Place the slug on a metal surface, the magnet will be pulled towards the metal. This simple trick ensures that the magnet is close enough to the surface to hold your snail onto the fridge.
- Once the slug has cooled, heat up the top surface, as well as the base of the spiral you made earlier, then fuse the spiral onto the slug.
As a finishing touch we added some eye stalks. We made each eye stalk separately by hand, then joined them onto the head of the snail.
More Plastimake projects:
