Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Last week I shared a ceramic tile sign that I made . It went so well, that I made another alcohol inked ceramic tile with a decal on it.  I cut the designs for this week and last week (and one I made a couple of weeks ago ) all at the same time to fill the 12-inch cutting mat. I made a design with a clipart sun and a song lyric from a fun upbeat song. The tricky part was learning how to wrap the text around the sun on a curve . But I managed to figure it out. I cut the designs on permanent black glossy vinyl using standard settings on my old Silhouette Cameo . After the designs were cut, I separated them from each other using scissors and then weeded the designs with a weeding pick tool .  I gathered up some sunshine colors in  yellow and orange alcohol   inks and prepped my surface with a craft mat . I started with some of the lighter colors (yellows) to get a base of color on the tile. I used a hand bulb blower and thinned the ink with rubbing alcohol to move the ink around the

A few weeks ago, I made a ceramic tile sign combining alcohol ink with a decal cut on my old Silhouette Cameo . It turned out so well, that I made another. When I made my last ceramic tile sign, I cut out a few different patterns out of the black vinyl to fill the 12-inch square cutting mat. Today's design was based on one that I found while doing some Googling. I found a similar design and then decided to make my own version of it. I found a free (for personal use) clipart sloth and layered the text over top of it in the Silhouette Design Studio. I cut it using standard vinyl settings and cut the designs apart from each other with scissors. I removed the excess vinyl with a weeding tool and set aside the vinyl. Then I pulled out my alcohol ink supplies and a 6-inch ceramic tile (picked up at the hardware store). I wanted the sloth to look like he was up in the trees so I selected a couple of shades of bright green and sky blue alcohol inks to cover the tile. I started out w

Check out all of my patriotic crafts here: 4th of July Stars and Stripes Craft Collection  

Around Memorial Day this year, I cut a couple of designs out of blue vinyl to make into signs. The first was applied to a Dollar Tree metal sign , the extra design cut through the backing, so it was set aside (I wasn't sure I'd be able to weed it without it coming to pieces). So, with the 4th of July holiday coming up, I thought I better try to salvage the vinyl. Both of the patriotic designs were freebies in the Silhouette design story at some point. I found them in my library and cut them on some blue permanent vinyl . I set it to the standard glossy vinyl settings in Silhouette Studio but upped the force to 11. Usually, this works well to make sure the design cuts cleanly without having to increase any other settings on my old Silhouette Cameo . The extra force worked fine on the other design on cut on this same sheet of vinyl, but parts of this design cut through the paper backing. The outside vinyl came off the design cleanly and easily. But I had to be a bit more careful

Our 3D printer has been a bit unreliable lately, so I haven't been making too many projects. One of the last things I printed was this great puzzle box lid holder . When the print didn't turn out perfectly, I took the opportunity to try decoupaging on printed PLA.  I used standard print settings (.2 resolution and 20% infil) using some purple PLA . The print took about 12 hours on our little printer . When it was done, it looked stringy, but otherwise not too bad. When I pulled it off the bed, the base layer was discolored and full of the hairspray I used to help with bed adhesion. I was able to clean up the stringy bits without any issues, but the base level remained marked up no matter how much I cleaned (and lightly sanded) it. Since I used some Tacky Glue to attach some felt to a 3D print project in the past and it has held up really well, I was pretty sure Mod Podge (which has the same base--PVA glue) should work well too. I found a piece of scrapbook paper in my craft