Clean/Dirty Dishwasher Magnet

This project is a slight variation of the laminate magnets a few posts ago.  It's a sign you put on your dishwasher that says whether the dishes are clean or dirty.  Now, I've gone a large portion of my life without one, but I think everyone's put dirty dishes into a clean dishwasher, especially if you have roommates.  After getting fed up, I knew a sign was in order.  You can buy them; I'm cheap and think there are more important things to spend my money on.  I tried notes and post-its, but I got tired of wasting paper and post-its.  The brilliant idea of making a magnet version came shortly after my first post about refrigerator magnets. 

The main difference is that for those magnets I wanted clean edges.  For this, I wanted to make sure that it was sealed and no water could get through, but I still didn't want a clear border like you see on laminated documents.  

For the image, I looked online for a while but couldn't find one that met my picky tastes so I ended up just making one on my computer to match my roommate's kitchen decor color of choice: Yellow. 

There are two ways to go about this.  The simpler way, the way I should've done it, is to start exactly like the tutorial in the aforementioned post.  The only changes being to make the laminate sheet larger than the magnet and image, then when attaching the laminate near the end, fold the border over the edge to the back of the "magneted image".  

What I did make the project just a hair more complicated.  I made the image, printed it, and sized the laminate about a quarter inch larger on all sides than the image, keeping it facing the adhesive (not as important of a detail when it come to rectangles and squares).  I then removed the backing and attached the image to the laminate.   I snipped the corners to line up with the image to avoid awkward folds that would create an uneven surface.  Then folded each border over to stick to the back of the image, starting pressing in the middle and  working to the edges.  Using my finger, I rubbed both sides down to ensure professional looking adhesion.  


I then attached it to a piece of magnetized sheet sized to a hair smaller than the image.  (Not shown) This is because the edge still had a slight border from the laminate fold-over and I didn't want any magnet showing through.  (Which is why I probably should've done it the first way I mentioned). 


Now it goes on the dishwasher and it's flipped so that the readable portion indicates its cleanliness status (see first image).  Enjoy!