DIY: Turning Disney MagicBands into Wall Art

Disney introduced MagicBands at Walt Disney World in 2013. These colorful, waterproof bracelets enable park guests to board transportation from the airport to their resorts, access hotel rooms, enter theme parks, pay for purchases, enter FastPass+ lines for attractions and link photos taken on rides or by Disney photographers to on-line accounts. In other words, they’re amazing.

They’re also beautiful.

If you’ve visited Disney World anytime in the last six years, you may have some of these gems resting in a drawer somewhere. I did. Quite a few. When I stumbled upon them again a few years back, I started brainstorming. How could I turn these bands into a memento of our trips?

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not particularly crafty. What I really mean, is that I would LOVE to make more things myself, but I’d prefer them to not look (scream?) like I did. My ambition is usually greater than my skill level or my patience.

Nevertheless, I gave it a try.

My goal was to turn the MagicBands into a wall hanging. Since I couldn’t decide if I wanted to create a memento for a specific trip or a piece of wall art from multiple trips, I bought the supplies for both of my ideas and waited to see which one worked better.

I went to Hobby Lobby and purchased the following: two shadow box wall frames (10×10″ and 11×14″ (see metric conversion in photos above), one package of black self-adhesive soft felt, one Styrofoam ring (5.8″ (13 cm) diameter with a rounded top) and a few pieces of card stock in various neutral shades. I’ve included a link to Hobby Lobby, but you can find similar supplies in other stores. The hardest part was locating a shadow box with a deep enough depth, since the majority of them are designed for photos. The ones I used have a 2 1/2″ (6.35cm) depth.

Here’s another (smaller) option you could try. It’s the Kasseby shadowbox from IKEA.

My first project was to create a memento for a specific trip. If you’ve visited Disney World once or celebrated a special occasion while you were there, maybe this design will inspire you. I looked through my bowl of MagicBands and found the four my family used in the fall of 2015. Then I located the “Magic Bandits” we used on that trip, which are small accessories you can attach to the bands. I was surprised to still have so many of them, since they tended to disappear easily. (Mickey’s head may still be resting at the bottom of Space Mountain somewhere!) I haven’t been able to find them lately, so the Bandits may have been discontinued for that reason.

Then I located the “thank you” card that we received from Disney after our trip.  These too are becoming less frequent due to Disney’s recent switch to thank-you emails. If you don’t have one of the cards shown above to use as a background, you could easily substitute a vacation photo, park map, resort brochure or some other keepsake from your trip. Plain paper or fabric would work too!

The only other supplies I needed were scissors, tape and an empty paper towel roll.

Sounds high class, no?

The first step was to trim the paper towel roll to fit the width of the frame. Then I wrapped a piece of card stock around the roll and attached it with the tape. I chose dark grey for the paper, because it I wanted it to be neutral and complementary to the frame. I trimmed the card stock a little too. You want the holder to fit snugly in the frame. Next, I slid the four MagicBands onto the holder and placed it in the shadow box. Then I added the thank-you card with a small piece of tape, just to see how it would look. You could use pins too, including the Disney trading variety.

Here’s a look at the result. If you have more bands, you could consider adding additional rows. Depending on how large your frame is, you could also try flipping it sideways.

Here’s another look, incorporating the Magic Bandits. Celebration buttons (Happy Birthday! First Visit! It’s Friday!) could be fun too. Those colorful luggage tags featuring Mickey and friends that Disney sends you with the MagicBands would look great as well.

Since that project didn’t take too much time, I moved on to my second option.

My second idea was to create a piece of wall art from multiple trips. This time I used the 10×10″ frame, along with the felt and Styrofoam ring mentioned above. The only other supplies I added were scissors, tape and black embroidery thread.

The first step was to cut the self-adhesive felt into long strips. Then I took the strips and wrapped them around the ring. Once I finished wrapping the ring, I started attaching the MagicBands. I debated keeping the extra grey border on the bands that still had them, but ultimately decided to remove them so all of the bands would look the same. The grey borders are designed to be removed so the one-size bands can be easily adjusted to fit smaller wrists, or in this case, a small Styrofoam ring.

Once the bands were in place, I placed the ring on top of the frame’s background. Then I tied a piece of the black embroidery thread around the top of the ring to secure it into place. You could probably use pins or a picture hook instead.

Finally, I reattached the frame background to the glass cover.

Here’s a look at the final result. Using a black ring with a black background really highlights the colorful bands.

If the black background doesn’t work with your decor, consider using burlap, small-print Disney fabric or cardstock in ivory or silver metallic to create a completely different look.

As you can see, I kept the second version and added it to my wall. I like how you can’t tell it’s made from MagicBands unless you look closely.

Speaking of looking closely, here’s how it looked a year or so later after I incorporated some of the newer style bands (MagicBands 2.0).  I like the variation of the band width, although the newer ones were a little more difficult to secure to the ring.

Earlier this year (2019) I decided to jazz it up a bit and add a few (lots?!?) more bands. This is the same ring from the original version, just with more bands covering it.

Oh, and I stuck a picture of Mickey from a gift card holder in the middle of it just for fun.

Since I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep the black background anymore, I played around with other options. After trying different card stock colors and Disney park maps I decided to use some of the burlap I had left over from my Moana Christmas ornament.

Change is good, right?

I ended up liking this version better then the original, so I hung it back on my wall.

The neutral backdrop works with anything, and the multiple MagicBands make me smile. There sure are a lot of happy Disney memories incorporated into that one piece of wall art!

Although I decided to keep the square frame, I ended up holding onto the rectangular one too. It may have had something to do with the fact that it’s the perfect size to hold one of these beauties. Now if you spring for some fancy ears while on vacation, you can get a little more joy out of it once you’re home too.

And that’s it. Are you feeling inspired yet?

I hope this post motivated you to track down your MagicBands and turn them into something fun! Or perhaps just looking at the bands let you relive some of those awesome Disney World vacation memories for a few moments?

Worth a shot.

Add a little (DIY) magic to your world!