Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

About a year ago I inked up a bunch of glass gems . I turned the most colorful ones into necklaces, but I was left with quite a few pretty gems and no use, well I recently got some tiny neodymium magnets and I knew just what to do with them first. I dug out my leftover glass gems and picked the birghtest of the smaller ones (the standard 1/2 inch-ish sized ones that you can pick up anywhere). Click on the link above to the original post to see photos of the inking process, but I simply put ink on the applicator and decorated the backs of the gems until I liked the color. I sealed these with mod podge because I made them in February--in warmer months I'd probably use clear acrylic spray . You can see the tiny stack of magnets in the photo above.  They are strong little magnets and a bit of a pain to work with since they are so small.  After one failed attempt at gluing, I decided my best option was to spread the gems out on a plate, put a dollop of E6000 glue on each

On Monday I posted a craft using some recycled Glade candle holders decorated with alcohol ink. Well, this is how I cleaned them out. Step 1: Put in freezer and forget about them (the forgetting is optional) Step 2: Take out of freezer and grab an old butter knife.  Pop wax out. Step 3: Run under increasingly warmer water (or let the glass return to room temperature and crank the water to hot right away).  Once the hot water has softened any remaining wax, use a paper towel to clean and polish out the candle holders. Step 4: Admire your work and decide what to do with your clean candle holders. Putting the candle in the freezer helps to solidify the wax and helps it pull away from the edges of the glass.  This method doesn't work as well for those candles you have burned down to practically nothing...but it did help keep the tiny disk of wax together as I scraped at it with my butter knife, so it's a helpful step to freeze them regardless.  The candle above t

I love the holiday scented Glade candles--they're the best.  So after the holidays I always have a few candle holders with wax left in the bottom.  So I cleaned a couple (I'll share my trick on Thursday) and decided to decorate them with alcohol ink. I knew I wanted to decorate them with mostly red to go in my family room since it has red accents.  So I grabbed some red and gold alcohol ink and got to work. My first pass was designed just to get some coverage and see how the colors mixed together. I stamped the outside of the candle holders from top to bottom and tried to get both candle holders covered without having to add more ink (so the colors would match in the end). As you can see, it was pretty one dimensional and a little pink looking. So for the second and third passes I added blue and then a teal color to my mix of reds and finished them off with metallic gold.With each layer, the ink became a little more stippled instead of running together like i

When I was a poor student I made quite a few batches of DIY wrapping paper. All you need is a roll of craft paper from the dollar store, some craft paint, and some foam paint stamps. I have been lucky finding rolls of paper on clearance and at dollar stores and I haven't made much wrapping paper lately. I decided that Valentine's Day was a perfect holiday to get back on the wrapping paper crafting bandwagon since Valentine's wrapping paper is not that common. When you do find some, it's usually not cheap. Since I have a pretty strict dollar a roll policy for wrapping paper (unless it's amazing wrapping paper), I usually end up wrapping V-day gifts in tissue paper.  So I thought it was time to upgrade! I dug through my paint stamps (I picked up most of these paint stamps at the goodwill outlet a while back or on clearance at various stores) and found a few Valentine's Day stamps and put some paint onto a paper plate. Then you just need to mix

At my last trip to the Dollar Tree, I saw some more altar candles, and I just couldn't resist picking up some more. This time I thought I'd whip up some candles for Valentine's Day with some layered tissue paper. All you need is the candles, some Mod Podge, a foam brush, and your tissue paper. I decided to put a layer of white down first and then cut out some heart shapes to glue over the top. Gluing the tissue paper on is pretty simple, but it tears very easily if the tissue paper is wet. So keep your hands dry and free from glue. Plan ahead and glue the tissue paper on in sections with one of the sides lined up as straight as possible so that you don't have to reposition the paper. After you've applied the glue to the candle jar, just tap the paper into place. It doesn't have to be perfectly glued down or smoothed out. Most of the wrinkles will smooth out to a more pleasing texture as it dries and any loose edges can be glued down later.