Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I've been slowly making these decorated altar candles from Dollar Tree for every major holiday.  I started with Halloween , then Christmas/Winter , and Valentine's Day .  I had two left in my stash and I came across some cute tissue paper with Easter eggs on it at Walmart, and I knew what I was doing next. I figured I'd jazz it up a bit by applying a larger egg down at the bottom of the candle. I had already applied colored cut outs to white paper (with the Valentine's candles), but I hadn't tried it over patterned paper. First I soaked the bottoms of my candles in the kitchen sink to loosen the sticky labels. I used a plastic dish scraper to get the labels off once they were wet, and they came right off--I didn't even need to use goo gone. Then I printed an egg template out on some cardstock that was a similar shape to the ones on the tissue paper and cut out some solid colored eggs to apply over top of the patterned paper. The trickiest part was c...

A couple of weeks ago I revisited my alcohol ink decorated glass gem project.  I made a couple of necklaces and was still left with quite a few decorated gems.   The first time I made the glass gems , I thought it might be a good idea to back them with paper or foil to make them appear a little more solid/opaque, reflect light, make the colors pop, and hide any magnets or bails that were glued onto the back. So I tore off a sheet of aluminum foil from the kitchen stash and grabbed my one-inch circle punch and made myself some foil circles. (Punching aluminum foil is also supposed to sharpen your paper punches--I'm not sure I believe that, but I guess it couldn't hurt.) I decided to crumple a few and leave a few smooth to see the difference. I chose the lightest (in color) of my gems to put the crumpled foil on. I spread on some mod podge with a foam brush --making sure to put plenty of glue on the gems that were getting the crumpled foil so that it woul...

Ok, so this one is on it's third time round, but I like the project so much that I just can't throw away my empty containers after the holiday green bean casserole season--I just have to turn them into cute storage containers. In case you missed them:   The first time I covered one of the French's Fried Onion containers I used some cute polka dot tissue paper that layered really well. Which worked great because the paper was thin and I teared it in a couple spots on the first layer. The second time I made this handy storage container, I  I used a thicker tissue paper that probably could have worked just fine with one layer, but had a nice shadow effect with two layers. My third attempt was with this cute multicolored striped tissue paper. Just like with the first two, I cut two rectangles of tissue paper that were just barely taller than the container and long enough to wrap around with a bit of overlap. I spread some mod podge onto the ...

A couple of weeks ago I dug out my old decorated glass gems and whipped up some magnets .  The project reminded me just how rewarding decorating glass gems with alcohol ink is. And since I have more colors of alcohol inks and some new glue-on bails since the last attempt, I thought it was worth a revisit (original post) . So I grabbed some 1 inch glass gems  (which I picked up at Dollar Tree), my inks, and my applicator and got to work on a craft mat. I remembered from last time that the brightest and darkest colors work the best, so I used a variety on the backs of the gems. I just dropped a few different colors onto the felt and stamped and switched colors until I liked what I saw. And just like last time they turned out so pretty so quickly! After they had dried (and I had taken some photos), I flipped them over and mod podged the backs to keep them from smearing or scratching.  A clear sealer would work well for this step too, but it was ...

I had two more leftover Glade candle holders to makeover and I decided to give them the "stained glass" treatment with tissue paper. I collected the brightest colored tissue paper I could find in my stash to try to shake me from my winter doldrums (seriously, when is winter going to be over...).   I chopped my colored paper into various sizes of squares and rectangles.  I just tried to cut up a bunch so I wouldn't have to pause while gluing to cut up more.  I ended up cutting more after the first candleholder was covered (my first pile is pictured below), but I had a bunch leftover when I was all done, so it was probably just the sizes that I liked the best that I happened to be out of. After I had a nice pile of randomly cut squares, I used a foam brush to paint about 2 inches of mod podge onto the candle holder.  This was about the largest area I seemed to be able to work in before the glue would start to dry before I could get my squares positi...