Making Magnets has been an integral part of the planning process for me ever since our Med cruise in 2010. I spend many happy hours looking through the Photobuckets of talented designers to find inspiration and then request my favourite designs. I like that this makes our door look more personal and also helps us to find our cabin quicker in a corridor where every door looks like the next. On some of our more recent cruises, I had difficulties with Magnets not sticking to the door properly and falling off. So for the last cruise, I decided to just laminate the designs and stick magnetic tape to the back. This worked extremely well and none of the magnets moved even slightly. So this is what I have done again this time. The only slight issue is that my cheap laminator is getting rather too hot after a while and this makes the edges curl. Still, I had plenty of time to get the magnets done and just laminated them in small badges of 6 to 8 at a time.
Normally most of my magnets are pretty generic. Although they tend to be personalized with the date of the cruise, the actual design could be used for any cruise. I then have a few magnets that are specific to the itinerary or to the ports of call. This cruise is different. I have a few generic Magnets, but most of them are specific to the itinerary or the ports of call. Here are my generic magnets:
Other than that my magnets fall into four categories: Itinerary Specific, general Panama Canal, Panama Canal 100th Anniversary and Ports of Call.
The star attraction of this cruise is definitely the Panama Canal for me. So I have a nice variety of magnets for this. This is also a rather special year for the Panama Canal. In August of this year, the Panama Canal will celebrate its 100th anniversary so of course I need some magnets to commemorate this this.
Normally I have one or two magnets with the itinerary on them, but I recently came across some great designs that are symbols made up of words. I really like those and they contain all the ports of calls and other information about this cruise. I also have a couple of more traditional itinerary magnets.
While I was browsing, I came across some really cute porthole designs with the ports of call for a Med itinerary. I asked if something like this could be done for the ports for this cruise. I really love how they have come out.
Another designer did some different port graphics for me and I really love them, too.
Now I just have to find the time to actually add the magnetic tape, but that can be a task for the weekend.