Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I have to start off this post with some sad news, because it was that news that inspired this week's craft project. My 94 year old grandma passed away. In her later years, she took up drawing and painting and really enjoyed it, so I wanted to do a craft that used some of her artwork. This ended up being quite challenging. Our scanner that does a good job with documents and and an ok job with photos, did a terrible job with her colored pencil drawings. They came out completely washed out and overexposed. So I took some photos of the art, which turned out ok, so onward with the project. I used Word to shrink them down to 3/4 of an inch (the size of scrabble tiles) and printed them out onto some matte photo paper.  I cut the little pictures of art out and mod podged them onto the blank side of the Scrabble tiles. After they were dry, I used an old emery board to remove any excess paper or glue along the edges. Then I put a layer of Diamond Glaze onto the ti

Every Christmas it seems that I end up receiving (or buying) nuts or cookies in one of those Christmas tins. I save the cute ones thinking I'll give someone cookies in them, but if I don't use them the next year, they often end up in basement oblivion. This cookie tin got dragged out of the basement and repurposed. I grabbed a cardboard box and a can of black gloss spray paint and went out onto the patio. I put several coats of paint on and let them dry 10 or 15 minutes between layers (sometimes less, as it was hot out and drying pretty quickly). The photo above was after 3 or 4 coats, and I probably put 3 or 4 more coats on after that. Multiple thin layers works best. When I was done, you could still see some raised areas from the design on the lid of the tin, so I decided to cover it with some scrapbook paper. I'm sure I bought this scrapbook paper on one of those 6 for a dollar sales that they have every now and again at Michael's. It seemed

We were shopping at the local Wal-mart when I saw this adorable new " Happy Camper " duct tape with retro campers and pink flamingos on an aqua blue background. I knew I needed to have the duct tape, but I wasn't sure what I should do with it. Then I remembered the six-pack carrier we got from World Market when we picked our create-your-own six pack of sodas this spring. It folds flat just like the six pack carriers you get your favorite flavor of beer in ( which I've covered before with scrapbook pape r), but it's made from much thicker cardboard which made it ideal for covering and using as a picnic carrier. I grabbed a couple rolls of solid tape to go along with my Happy Camper print and got started. At first I just flattened my carrier and taped straight along the bottom. The bulk of the carrier was covered very quickly. When I got to the top of the carrier, I taped over the stair step openings. Then I simply cut slits with my scisso

I had some Amazon gift cards saved up, and I knew just what to get with them: a Cuttlebug . A Cuttlebug is an embossing and die cutting machine. It looks like a little purse, but weighs about 10 pounds. When you set it on your table, you fold down the flaps on the front and back of the Cuttlebug to suction to your work surface. Then you can start embossing. The Cuttlebug comes with an A plate (which looks like a cutting board) that acts like a spacer and two B plates. The base Cuttlebug does not come with a C plate. A C plate is used for die cutting (especially with the thinner dies made by brands other than CriCut/Cuttlebug). I don't have any dies yet, so I started out learning the basics of embossing. The A spacer plate goes on the bottom, then you put one B plate on top. Then the embossing folder with a sheet of paper in the middle, then another B plate on top. They call these "sandwiches." You place all the plates on the Cuttlebug and gently insert