Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

It's been so cold here this November. This weekend we had a warm snap and we put the Christmas lights up on the house for fear it would be freezing from here on out. We usually wait until after Thanksgiving, but we weren't alone. Several of our neighbors put up lights too. So it's officially beginning to look a lot like Christmas out there. So I knew I wanted to do another holiday craft this week.    Since I needed to drag my tiny sewing machine out to fix dear husband's Tae Kwon Do uniform, I figured I'd sew up some felt ornaments that I had cut out and waiting to be sewn. I actually cut these out years ago. I finished one of them to give as a gift and the other two just sat waiting to be completed. These felt cut-outs are in the shape of Meeples , which are popular game tokens for strategy games (especially Carcassonne ). I found a meeple outline online and adjusted the size of it in Word, then I printed it out on paper and cut around it. I used the p

Last month when I made Halloween candles out of the Dollar Tree altar candles and some tissue paper, I mentioned that I had picked up 4 of them. Well, today I was inspired by last night's early season snowfall to make some snowflake decorated holiday candles. This time I decided to use some cocktail napkins that I picked up after Christmas at Wal-mart last year and some glitter. So I gathered up my supplies and got started.  The first thing I had to do was clean the label off of the candle jars.  I soaked them in a couple inches of water in the kitchen sink for just a few minutes and used a dish scraper to scrape the label off, and then I sprayed some goo gone onto the residue and wiped them off and they were good to go. Next I peeled apart the layers of the napkin so I could use just the top layer on the candles.  Once you get the corner peeled back, just carefully pull the napkin apart. Next I trimmed the perforated part of the napkin off.  The cockta

I've been wanting to test this pin for quite some time.  With the fall in full force and a week with flurries and highs in the 30s forecasted next week, I knew it was time to try to lighten my toe nails after a summer of wearing polish.  I've been polish-less for a week or two, and this year wasn't too bad.  It's just one big toe that's really discolored, the rest came out ok.  So I found the pin for whitening nails: Mix 1 tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide with 2 1/4 tablespoons of baking soda.  Stir into paste and let sit on nails for 5 minutes. So to start off with I was a bit skeptical because I don't know what a 1/4 tablespoon is, but I estimated and did my best.  I mixed my tablespoon of peroxide with 2 and a little extra tablespoons of baking soda and stirred it into a paste. I massaged the paste onto my nails and made a nice big mess. It gets all over your hands and quickly turns back into a powder, so be sure to try this in the kitchen or bathroom

The Holiday season has officially begun. I know it's still early, but I gotta get a jump on my crafting before crunch time.  Besides, I found this paper mache reindeer way back last spring at the Goodwill Outlet (where they bring all the crap that doesn't sell and can't be recycled from the area Goodwills and let people fill up their carts and pay by weight). Paper Mache is light and I could see his potential, so I tossed him in my cart. I'm sure I paid like a quarter for it. Upon closer examination of my new reindeer, I noticed he had a crack in one of his antlers. This is what he looked like before: So my first step was fixing the crack in his antler. I put some tacky glue in the crack (figuring a slightly flexible glue would work better, but elmers probably would have worked fine). After I let the glue dry, I set about making my reindeer a little antler bandage. I grabbed some white tissue paper and my Mod Podge.  I ripped some small strips of tis