Refrigerator Re-do

I love keeping photos on the front of my refrigerator. My family all lives far away from me, so I like the everyday reminder of their faces on my fridge. The photos inevitably become a conversation piece, too, whenever I have friends over and I love sharing stories and memories about my family.  Here's a photo of the front of my fridge, pre-re-do.

I tend to use the side of my fridge for more practical things - an envelope with coupons, a shopping list, a gym schedule, to do lists, etc.  It looked like this:

The refrigerator certainly didn't look terrible but I wanted a better way to display the photos and keep everything organized.  I had a jumble of different magnets - some of which worked really well and some of which didn't - and I wanted a more cohesive (and reliable) system.  I was browsing through CraftGawker, by far my favorite source for DIY/crafty inspiration, and came across this simple project that uses clothespins affixed with magnets and super cute themed tags to hold items. 

First, I printed the (free) printables sheet with all the tags.  I chose a cream colored card stock and it worked great.  Then I assembled my supplies - clothes pins, paint in 3 different colors, foam paint brush, magnets, and a good pair of scissors to cut out the tags.  I did 12 clothes pins in all and painted 4 each in yellow, red, and green.  I printed 2 sets of the printables.  I cut them all out, but ended up choosing the 12 I thought I'd most use.  (I'm keeping the others for another yet-to-be-identified project.)  The project was super easy to do, though the clothes pins took longer than I anticipated to paint.  They're little, but with lots of nooks and crannies so it took several coats!

The biggest challenge was finding magnets that were strong enough to hold the clothes pin and whatever it needed to hold. I bought some magnetic tape (as the project sheet suggested) but it didn't work at all.  Then I tried some button magnets and they were only slightly more 'sticky.' Finally, I had the brainstorm to repurpose some magnetic poetry magnets I'd gotten as a gift years ago and which I no longer really used.  I used 2-sided tape to stick the magnet to the back of the clothes pin and - voila - it worked!  (It doesn't look so pretty from the back, but I figure no one's going to see the back anyway.  If I were going to make these for a gift, I would definitely do something a little neater.)

So here's the fridge post-project:

 And a close up:

And here's the side of the fridge:

With a close up of the coupons envelope (of which I am very proud! - I just love the way it looks):

The tags I ended up using included Happy Memories, Things The Inspire, I Heart (several of each of those), along with one each of Birthdays, Shopping List, My Recipes, and Please Remember To.  I love, love, love the way this turned out! 

I kept all my old magnets and have another project in mind for them.  Stay tuned...