DIY Candy Corn Magnets: Silhouette Portrait 3 Project

What is the best way to decorate a metal door? With magnets!

If you have a metal door magnets are a great way to decorate for the holidays. They can be switched out fast and kept for years. You could buy the magnets, but if you have a vinyl cutting machine, like a Silhouette or Cricut, you can make them! (Perfect for the fridge too!) I recently made DIY Candy Corn magnets for our door, using my Silhouette Portrait 3, and I love how they turned out so I wanted to share how I made them.

A plus for this DIY project is it is a great one for those who have just purchased a vinyl cutting machine and need an easy project to start with. It will help introduce you to your machine, how to cut your vinyl with or without a cutting mat, and an easy project to learn how to weed. So, let’s dive in and learn how to make DIY Candy Corn Magnets!

The supplies you will need

To make these DIY Candy Corn Magnets on your Silhouette Portrait 3 you will need a cutting mat, adhesive magnet sheets, orange, yellow, and white vinyl, a hook tool, scraper tool, and Simply Sweet Cut Files Candy Corn Template. (Currently, $0.74 on the design store.) If you like you can also use transfer tape. If this is your first project with your Silhouette Portrait 3 make sure you have completed all of the setup instructions for your machine, and you have downloaded the Silhouette studio.

Directions

Start by downloading the candy corn template. When it is in your library double click it and it will pop up in your studio. You will see the design is laid out in 3 separate shapes. You will need to create 3 pages. 1 page for each piece. Next, you need to decide how large you would like your candy corn to be. I wanted my pieces to be large enough to decorate my door so I did not change the size of the candy corn templates. (If you would like small candy corns then you need to resize each of your pieces.)

Adhesive Magnet Sheets

Once you have all of your shapes arranged on your individual pages the way you want them it is time to cut! I was able to get 3 of the large candy corn shapes on one sheet, and this sheet is the same one I used to cut my magnets and my orange vinyl. Get out your cutting mat and align your first adhesive magnet sheet, white side up, and then feed it into the front of your Silhouette. In the design studio go to the Panels tab and go down to the page set up. This is where you are going to let your machine know you are using a cutting mat or not.

Select your machine, whether you are using a cutting mat and the size of your paper. (NOTE: If you are using a cutting mat but don’t have it selected, and vice versa, your sheet may not feed properly.) After you are done letting your machine know you are using a cutting mat you can click over to SEND. On this tab, you will tell your machine what kind of product you want to cut, and what blade you are using.

Select magnet paper with adhesive backing, cut, and auto for the blade. You can also select how many blade passes you would like your machine to do and then also select for it to do a test cut. (Personally, I like for my machine to do 2 passes, and I ALWAYS do a test cut.) If the test works and the page feeds properly you can hit send and watch it cut out your magnets! Since I wanted 6 magnets I did 2 pages of the magnet sheets.

Cutting the orange vinyl

As I mentioned above the orange vinyl uses the same template as the magnetic sheets. With the Silhouette Portrait 3, you do not need to use a cutting mat with certain materials and vinyl is one of them. If you are new to your machine you can take a crack at cutting without a cutting mat with your orange vinyl. Make sure you go back to the Panels tab, page setup, and select that you are not using a cutting mat. (That way it can feed properly.)

Once you have selected whether or not you are using a cutting mat go back to the SEND tab and make sure you change your selection to the correct vinyl material you are using. Select cut, auto blade, how many cutting passes you would like, and then hit TEST. If your TEST run comes out good you can hit SEND. You will need to do this twice to get the 6 large candy corn shapes. (TIP: If this is your first time using your machine you may want to cut out extra vinyl shapes just in case. You will see why when it’s time to weed your project.)

The Yellow vinyl

How did your orange vinyl turn out? If you did not run into any issue you need to troubleshoot you can move onto cutting your yellow vinyl. The yellow vinyl is the medium/middle piece for your candy corn. I was able to get 4 middle pieces on one sheet and 2 on my second. (If your pieces are smaller you will of course be able to get more to a sheet.) Now that you have the hang of cutting without a cutting mat you can decide which way you like to cut better and use that method. (Cutting mat or no cutting mat.) Again, just double check your Page Setup to make sure everything is correct, load your vinyl into your machine, head to the SEND tab, and make sure everything is correct, hit TEST, and if everything is good hit SEND to cut out your yellow vinyl.

White Vinyl

The white vinyl is the tippy top of your candy corn. Because it is the smallest I was able to fit all 6 on one sheet. The steps to cut it are the same as before. Double-check all of your settings, load your vinyl into your machine, run a TEST, and if everything is good hit SEND. After it is done cutting you are done cutting for the project! Next, it’s time to weed.

Weeding your Candy Corn

As I mentioned one of the things I love about this DIY candy corn magnet project is it is a great beginner’s project. Weeding is not straight off the bat easy. It takes practice. So the fact that there are no twists or turns with the candy corn makes it the perfect project to learn how to weed. What is weeding? It is the process of getting your project out of your vinyl pages. When weeding you are going to want to use the hook tool and maybe tweezers.

I started out first by getting my magnets weeded out. They are the easiest and should really pop right out. I then moved on to the orange vinyl. Make sure you go slow. In a perfect world, you should be able to slightly push on a part of your creation and it will pop out and you can pull the excess vinyl right off leaving just your candy corn pieces. But this doesn’t always happen, and that is why I suggested printing out extra vinyl pieces just in case. If you weed your vinyl too fast it can tear so take your time, go slow, and if you need to use some of your extra pieces that is ok!

Putting all your pieces together

Once you have all your pieces weeded out it’s time to assemble your candy corn! Peel the white paper off of one of your magnetic candy corn cutouts. This is the adhesive part of the magnet and you want to place your orange vinyl piece on top of it. (TIP: If you have some, this is the part of the project where you can practice using your transfer tape.) After your orange piece is in place and you have used the scraper tool to smooth everything out it’s time to place your yellow vinyl on top of the orange. Smooth out the yellow vinyl, and then place the white vinyl on top of the yellow vinyl. Voila! you created a candy corn magnet! Repeat all of the layering steps till you are done with all of your DIY candy corn magnets!

If you make these DIY Candy Corn Magnets how did they turn out? Let me know in the comments!

Other easy DIY projects

If you are looking for other easy DIY projects then make sure you check out my Blue’s Clues and Magenta DIY Ears HERE, my Paw Patrol Communicator craft HERE, and my easy DIY Holly Wreath Ornament HERE.