Emily Rennie looks through dozens of magazines at a time, but not necessarily because she’s fascinated by the stories. She’s on a scavenger hunt for interesting images she can turn into her increasingly popular magnets.
“If I can find it, if I can cut it out, I can turn it into a magnet,” said Rennie, the 37-year-old secretary at the Extension Service in Pittsboro who is an admitted craft-aholic.
“I’ve been crafting all my life,” she said. “You can’t spit without hitting craft stuff in my house. There’s fabric, there’s thread, snippets of anything, paper, felts, appliqués, enough sequence to choke a horse. I could supply Disney with glitter.”
Rennie makes fabric bookmarks, sleep masks, “old fashioned” Walmart bag holders, eye glass cases, Chapstick key rings, tissue covers, but by far, her most popular item has been the magnets.
“When I first started making the magnets, I was using the little flat back domed gems you can get at the dollar store in the floral section,” she said. “They’re usually used in the bottom of a vase, but because they had the flat back, I realized what I could do with them.”
She found the idea on Pinterest, seeing a magnet with a little snowman face painted on it.
“I literally went home and thought, ‘I could do something more than just paint snowmen.’”
Rennie keeps stacks of magazines to turn through constantly looking for art and images she can cut out and use for magnets.
“My mom volunteers at a rummage house, so I would buy books and look through them looking for images small enough to fit,” Rennie said. “Anything that could fit on that little dome had a chance of becoming a magnet.”
In addition to magazine pictures, Rennie also paints the designs for some of the magnets.
“The only medium I use is fingernail polish,” she said. “I have a 14-year-old and she buys a color, uses it two or three times and she’s done. Like all the art stuff, I kept the finger nail polish because I knew there would be something I could do with it.”
“The tricky part with painting is you have to do it reversed. You have to do the top layer first and then build from there. That can be difficult, especially any kind of writing or phrase.”
The problems with the dome pieces were their imperfections – bubbles, cracks and irregular sizing – made it difficult at times to get the right images to fit and show through.
“I sold them for very cheap when I started, but they really took off.”
Rennie is a regular at the Oxford Makers Market and sells her magnets locally at Patchwork on South Newberger in Bruce. As the demand for the magnets grew, Rennie decided she should aim for higher quality, so she went online to find better glass pieces in a variety of sizes.
She also began expanding her work from random pieces to actual sets.
“One of the first sets I made was the lead characters from Harry Potter,” Rennie said. “Those sold quickly. People like the whole set and the idea they were a ready-made gift.”
She also began fielding requests for specific magnets.
“My first custom order was an Ole Miss set and that snowballed,” Rennie said. “Last Christmas, I had a customer order more than 40 magnets.”
“I’ve had people send me family photos for magnet sets. I’ve probably had up to 25 custom orders.”
She made a set of magnets featuring algebraic equations from an old algebra text book that were purchased by a math teacher in Oxford.
“The request that tickled me the most was someone wanted the Stark family from ‘Game of Thrones,’” Rennie said. “I loved that because I really like that show, too.”
She had a customer order a dozen tennis-themed magnets and didn’t want them all the same.
“That was unique but I thought it turned out really well.”
Her most popular magnets right now are anything SEC.
“One of my most popular sets is the ‘house divided,’ featuring Ole Miss and Mississippi State magnets. Another popular magnet is the one featuring a photo of the Bruce Museum.”
Rennie said her most popular magnets around Calhoun County feature the country lifestyle – barns, deer, nature scenes, flowers. “The ones that sell better in Oxford is the kind of off the wall, odd stuff.”
She transformed images of insects and flowers from a vintage botanical book into magnets and took an old Michael Jackson CD and cut it up and it sold as soon as it was done.
“What I love most is this is an inexpensive way to make someone’s day,” Rennie said. “I love hearing when people find something in the magnets that strikes a chord with them. I love hearing their stories and knowing something I did had an impact on them.”