Magnetic bookmarks are one of our bestselling products. Probably because they make a small, unusual, low-cost gift idea. 

A magnetic bookmark is pretty much what it sounds like - a folding bookmark with two magnets on the inside that snap together. This allows you to clip the bookmark over the edge of a page (and it doesn’t slide out of your book!) They can be traditional rectangular designs or shaped around your design. 

And would you believe they’re actually quite easy to make? 

With a few tips and tricks, and some hints on finding the best supplies, this blog post will show you how to make magnetic bookmarks that are unique and high quality. 

We’ll cover the full process, including:

1. how to make the design, 

2. how to print, laminate and cut,

3. how to score and fold,

4. what magnets to use and how to apply,

5. Packaging 

 

1. How to make the design 

Here’s how to make a good design for a magnetic bookmark, and a few things to consider. 

Step 1 - choose an image. We create our own illustrations but you could use whatever graphic you want, even a photo. We find simpler designs work best, though, as finer details and more complex designs tend to get lost. 

Step 2 - Add an outline (known as an offset) around your image. This is to give a nice sense of space around your image when cut. We use Affinity Designer for this and draw the outline digitally with a iPad and iPencil, but you could use a program that you’re most comfortable with. 

Step 3 - copy and invert your image. Then move it upwards along the same axis so you have two parallel images that are lined up exactly on either side.

Step 4 - add a rectangle to join the two images together. You want to leave enough room between the two images to fold the bookmark. We find that a narrower rectangle works better than a wider one when scoring and folding.

Note: If you’re cutting your magnetic bookmarks out by hand with scissors as opposed to a cutting machine you might want to add an outline so you know where to cut. 

Step 5 - export as a png with a transparent background in high resolution. 

2. How to print, laminate and cut

This makes up the part of the process that took us the longest to get right. 

We’ll outline how we go about this stage, as well as things that worked and that didn’t work for us. 

Printing

If you’re making bookmarks in bulk you may want to set up multiple magnets on one sheet of A4. We print ours on 300gsm A4 white card from PaperCutz using a Canon Pixma Pro 300 printer, but you can use whatever printer you have on hand as long as it can feed heavyweight card. The main thing is to print in as high resolution as possible.

Note: As we use a Cricut Maker 3 to cut our magnets out, we do this in Cricut studio. That’s another post in its own right though. We’ll get to cutting later. 

Can you use printable magnetic sheets?

Personally, we wouldn’t recommend these. They’re a nice idea, but in practice we found that, although they printed beautifully, the magnets weren’t very strong. They stick well to a fridge, but didn’t stick well to each other and therefore didn’t clip around a page - a fundamental problem for a magnetic bookmark! Furthermore, we found that the lamination sheets peeled off the surface, and when folded, the paper layer frayed/ripped. 

Laminating

We recommend laminating on both sides for rigidity. We use a thermal laminator on the hot setting and laminating pouches. We run it through twice before cutting, and then twice again after cutting. We find that the roller flattens any raised edges from the cutting machine and multiple presses makes sure the lamination doesn’t peel. 

You could also use self adhesive laminating sheets/roll. We tried this and it was an absolute disaster of crinkles and bubbles, lol. This is a process in itself that would take quite some practice to perfect! But, by all means if you prefer you can do it this way. 

Cutting

If you don’t have a cutting machine, you could cut your magnetic bookmarks out with scissors. We’ve never done it thins way ourselves, but I’d imagine you’d want to score and fold the bookmark first so that both halves are cut identically and match up when folded. 

When using a cutting machine (as mentioned we use a Cricut Maker 3) you just want to do a bit of experimentation with your settings to get the cut to go through fully. We set up our own profile based on trial and error.

3. How to score and fold

There’s a bit of a trick to this, and it involves using a scoring board. This is a board of debossed lines that comes with a scoring knife. It allows you to make nice clean, crisp folds and also helps you to fold exactly on the centre of the bookmark by using the lines on the board as placement guides. This gives you a perfectly aligned bookmark when folded.

We score twice, once on the top and once on the bottom. Then gently fold. You have a bit of wiggle room on alignment so just check your edges all line up as you fold. 

If you don’t have a scoring board you can also fold around a sharp edge like a ruler. 

Although this works, it’s a bit awkward to line up the centre, it can give you a messy fold, pucker the lamination, and bend the bookmark in the wrong places. So definitely expect a bit of practice here.
 

4. What magnets to use and how to apply

This is the fun snappy bit!

We had a bit of trial and error with sourcing magnets that are strong enough to hold the magnet closed, but not so strong that they rip your page when taking the bookmark out of your book. We use self adhesive magnet strips from First4Magnets. 

You take two magnets and pop them together. 

Note: they only snap together when oriented in one direction. If they don’t immediately snap to each other, then twist them around until they do. They tend to snap together better when slightly offset, as opposed to perfectly lined up. 

Stick the adhesive onto one side of your bookmark. The lower down the bookmark the better!

Then peel off the remaining adhesive strip and press your bookmark down onto it. Match the edges up carefully as you do so it’s perfectly aligned.

 

Troubleshooting 

Occasionally, the bookmarks won’t snap together. This could be for several reasons:

1: your magnets are placed too high up close to the fold.

2. your magnet is too short. We find short, wide magnets can be a bit awkward. Make the rectangular join area between your two images longer or alter your image into a different aspect ratio. 

3. your magnets aren’t strong enough, or aren’t aligned right.

5. Packaging

If you’re looking to sell your magnetic bookmark designs, then consider planning some attractive packaging. 

We cut our own backing card with a slot for the magnets to clip through, holding them in place.  

We then place them in a recyclable celo bag from EcoCraft. 

Happy crafting!

We hope you found this blog post useful. Happy bookmark making!