I invented these meal magnets to make life easier for my mother-in-law, Liz. We lived with her and Luke’s stepdad, sister and her boyfriend for five years. Liz would try and figure out food shopping for the week, and ask for meal ideas, and we’d promptly forget every meal that has ever existed.

The magnets remind you of your favourites, and you can collect a bunch and keep them on the fridge next to the planner, or keep them in a pot nearby and pull them out as needed.

The planner is designed to fit the magnets, but also allow extra room to add tweaks or write in.

Customers can commission their own magnets, and my stock has grown over time doing this. I offer a larger discount for more new commissions, due in part to the length creation process from concept to printed magnet.

The illustration is sketched in procreate on my ipad. Once I am happy with it, it’s imported into Illustrator, where I add text, and using offset path and a few other tricks, an outline is created.

When it’s time to print, I drag all the relevant magnets from my Adobe Library onto a blank illustrator document, and then use an extension called Ecut to automatically position them on the sheet to fit the maximum possible to a page.

The artboard is then exported as a png and sent to Cricut Design Space, where it is printed onto the magnet paper. I cover the magnets or meal planner with a transparent vinyl by hand, and then the sheet goes into the machine for cutting.

The Cricut is a fickle beast and does not cut all things equally. Things are calibrating a bit better now, due to trial and error, and some software updates. But even when magnets print poorly, I came up with a fun solution to reduce waste.

Customers who place large orders will get extra magnets from my “f*cked magnets” bag. They’re all useable but imperfect in some way.

Leah: 1

Climate change: 0