April 10, 2008
Go beyond corkboard and pins. Here's a great tip that I found when I visited the super cool advertising firm upstairs in our building here on Crosby Street. They used one wall as a huge display board for all their presentations and they attached everything with magnets. The secret was that they had painted an undercoat of magnetic paint on the wall, which made the whole thing magno attractive (that's it, above).
I had never used it before and now use it in our offices. It's particularly nice because you can affix a whole bunch of stuff without making pin holes or tape marks on your walls. The more coats you apply, the more magnetic it gets.
One of our readers, Amber, used it to paper her entire hallway with posters (above). It can also turn your wall into a really nice workspace. One of my clients, Rebecca, is using it in her bedroom to attach her acting lines to her wall while she's rehearsing.
The other secret is to not use regular magnets, but to use Rare Earth Magnets. These are small, shiny, smooth magnets that have about 10x the attractive power of anything you grew up with. In fact, they are so strong you have to be careful with them (don't swallow them!), but they'll hold anything. All links are below.
Best,
>> Magcraft Rare Earth Magnets
(Poster pic from Amber at My Aim is True)
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This is very cool! Thanks for the heads up.
view kittyj's profile
so what's the ultimate word on magnets near your computer? i'm contemplating putting up a metal strip behind my computer to put things up with magnets. will it harm my computer? it's an imac so the hard drive would be kinda near it... or is there only harm if it's a heavy duty magnet? i've tried to google it but haven't really been able to decide what to do.
view hoboken_melanie's profile
Magnets are BAD for hard drives. If the magnet has a shielded side you should be okay. The magnets shown in the picture above are NOT: they attract things from both sides equally.
The field decreases quickly with distance. I suppose 6 inch from a small magnet should be enough.
view Jute Zak's profile
I have a similar question. I used magnetic paint on the cabinet holding my Sirius radio and speakers. Can I use the super strong rare earth magnets on the outside or will it fry the radio?
view mdeathstar's profile
Rare earth magnets rock. I use them to keep all my knives on the side of my refrigerator, where they're handy and look great. They hold my pot holders on the side of my stove--I just made tiny slits in the pot holders with an Exacto and stuffed in one of the little magnets. There a a million things you can hold up with them!
view Aulaire's profile