Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

So, I know, I've done so many of these altar candles that I made them their very own tag. Check out all of them here: Dollar Tree Altar Candles . But...I hadn't done any of the 4th of July yet, so I found some cute star napkins at Target and knew that just had to be my next altar candle project. To decorate plain altar candles with napkins, you'll need Mod Podge , a small  foam brush , a scissors, altar candles , and napkins. Cut your napkins to the size of your candle. I usually cut them a smidge long and wrap the excess over the bottom edge. Your napkin will probably be two layers--a printed top layer and a white second layer. When you cut the napkin, it should be easy to pull the excess white layer off. You could leave it, but I'd be worried about the glue not saturating to the second layer and not sticking, so I pull it apart. Next, line up one of the straight sides with the seam in your candle holder and along the top edge. Then paint a t

It's been a busy month so far, so I have to take a break from crafting this week and share a recipe that we tried out from our camping trip a couple of week's ago. Each time we go camping I try to plan for one wild card recipe--something new to try. Sometimes I make up my own recipes and sometimes I just adjust one I find online. This year I saw somewhere the idea to make quesadillas in a pie iron , but I was worried about how crispy they'd end up being, so I figured a foil packet quesadilla would work better. I mixed my quesadilla toppings in a bowl: precooked chicken (Tyson and Oscar Mayer both make good fridge packets that work great for camping), onion, shredded mexican cheese blend, and real bacon bits . Of courses you could put whatever you like on your quesadillas in the mix. One container of Oscar Mayer chicken and less than one 8oz bag of shredded cheese made 4 quesorittos. I spooned a quarter of the toppings onto each tortilla. In order to k

Last week I showed you the basics of die cutting Cuttlebug brand shape dies in the Cuttlebug  machine. (If you want to learn the Basics of Embossing with the Cuttlebug, click the link.) It's super simple once you learn the order of the plates. A lot of the dies that you run into these days though are not as simple as those shape dies. So today we'll go through how to die cut with metal plate style dies. As seen in the top photo, the sandwich is the same for the plate dies as with the shape dies (from the bottom): A spacer plate, B plate, your die, paper, C plate . With these plate dies, though, you often won't get a crisp cut on the first trip through the machine. You'll need to run it back and forth in the machine a couple times to get the cut above, which did not completely cut through the middle of the tree. So after the first trip through, turn the die and put a piece of paper under the die as a shim to improve the cut. Run it through the machine

I got a Cuttlebug machine last year (click the link for a basic embossing tutorial ). I haven't used it too much. One of the reasons I wanted to buy one was because it could both emboss and die cut and that many types of dies and embossing tools worked in the Cuttlebug. Unfortunately, the base model does not come with the C plate that you need to die cut. So that has to be purchased extra. I have the C plate and some dies to try out now, so I thought I'd walk you through the process. To cut with Cuttlebug brand dies, you'll need to start with the A spacer plate (the thick white one), followed by a B plate (that you'd use for embossing), then the die(s), a piece of paper, and the C plate (for die cutting). Stack them all up and crank them through the machine. As you can see in the shot above, the dies will cut into your C plate and leave it all marked up.  One crank and your designs are cut. These came from the " Labels and Such " set. You c