Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Well Christmas has come and gone, but our tree will be up until New Years, so I thought I'd squeeze one more holiday post in before the decorations all come down.  This one's a quick one that you can do with kids or whoever is crafty in your house and needing something to do during their vacations. Grab some popsicle/craft sticks , glue them into a starburst pattern and decorate--it's a piece of cake. I glued my 4 popsicle sticks into a starburst pattern with a hot glue gun , but you could easily use white glue or wood glue too.  The hot glue is just faster.  If you've got kids working on this project--a low temp glue gun would be a good option too. Then I painted my starburst white with some thinned down craft paint (going for a bit of a snowflake thing, but you could paint them whatever color you wanted--or even leave them plain and just decorate them). After the paint dried, I pulled out some glitter glue , but you could use sequins

Merry Christmas! Today's special holiday bonus post is a list of all of my DIY Christmas Ornament Tutorials.  I hope you have a safe and happy holiday week! 1. Transparency Ornaments  Print or copy an image that's just a bit smaller than your ornament onto transparency film, roll it into a tube, insert into a glass or plastic ball ornament and add some glitter or fake snow.  This worked really well with the outline of the nativity! 2. Snowflake Paper Punch Ornament  Punch paper with your favorite holiday punch and pin it to a styrofoam ball to cover the ornament in holiday cheer. 3. Button Ornament  Pin holiday colored buttons to a styrofoam ball for this cute ornament. 4. Painted Glass Ornaments  Swirl craft paint inside glass ornaments.  Turn as they dry and you'll have a stunning ornament for your tree. 5. Glitter Ornaments  Squirt a little floor wax into a glass ornament, drain excess, and then fill with glitter and shak

My mom gave me a giant box of craft sticks (aka popsicle sticks) this summer and I've been trying to figure out what to do with them.  I stumbled across a project to make snowflakes with them and knew I had to give it a try. You'll need: A glue gun craft sticks (42 to make this design) paint of your choice a flat area covered in parchment or newspaper to work on After deciding which design I was going to use, I laid it out on the table to get an idea of how big it was going to be and make sure I knew what I was doing. I stopped short of the whole design once I knew I had the general gist and started gluing. This design starts with a six pointed star. The hardest part of this project was making sure the star was even.  I worried about the flake laying flat since I had all six craft sticks stacked on top of each other in the center, but it worked fine. You could also cut out some cardboard circles or something like that to glue your sticks to so that it

Last November I decorated some glass ball ornaments with alcohol ink after seeing a video online posted by the Ranger folks (the ones who make the alcohol inks), and I simply had to try it.  They were super easy and quick and turned out really neat, so I knew I needed to try it again this year with some variations. So I grabbed two glass ornaments, a can of air, some rubbing alcohol, and some alcohol inks and set it all down on my craft mat.  I chose two shades of blue and silver for one ornament and red, green and gold for the other ornament. One thing I tried this year that was different was that I started with a wet ornament.  I rinsed it out with rubbing alcohol and then dumped the excess out.  This made the inks much thinner and easier to mix and cover the glass.  If you're looking for a more solidly covered ornament, this will definitely help.  The other thing I did different was that I used the metallic inks.  They work really well for this project. As

4 years ago I got my husband a giant sequoia in a can . We were able to get a sprout that grew into a seedling that has continued to grow very slowly in the house. It's almost big enough that it would survive outside, but we have no idea where to plant it based on it's potential size. To be honest, it was a novelty and I didn't think it would last this long. At any rate, it's starting to look like a little miniature Christmas tree, and I really wanted to decorate it this year. Unfortunately the branches won't hold ornaments--not even tiny ones, so I decided to make a light little garland. I grabbed some red string and my red and white duct tape, but I found out that duct tape has a shelf life of about 10 years (or at least this particular roll did). I had a red roll that I bought right after they started making colored duct tape probably about 12 years ago. When I tried to peel it, half of the sticky residue stayed stuck on the lower level of tape, so I had

A quick project this week as I'm in a total end of semester crunch.  I saw this idea while browsing on Pinterest and knew I had to give it a try.  I gathered up some colored rolls of duct tape, a scissors, and some gallon sized slider storage bags . Next I folded over the storage bag to create a crease that I could use as a guide to cut a straight line.  I just eyeballed about how big I wanted my pencil pouch (or makeup pouch or whatever you use it for) to be. After my bag was sliced, I put a contrasting piece of tape along the top edge (I tried one starting from the bottom and this seemed to work a bit better). Make sure to leave enough room for the slider to slide without catching on the tape. Then layer on more tape.  Keep it as straight as possible. When you're done with the everything except the bottom edge, flip it over and do the back side. After you've taped both sides, trim off the excess (much easier to trim with a scissors when th