Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Back in November, I made a bowl with cartoon strips decoupaged onto the back. I used dishwasher-safe mod podge so the decorated bowl could still be washed. It worked pretty well. Decoupaged dishes are no longer relegated to being only decorative. So, I decided I needed to make a decoupaged Valentine's Day plate. I found some cute decorative napkins at my local grocery store. Unfortunately, the design wasn't in the least bit circular (like my plate), so I had to cut it apart to get it to work on my plate. I grabbed my dollar store plate, the dishwasher-safe mod podge , a scissors, the napkins, and a foam brush. I later used a paper plate to keep the glass plate up off of the table while the glue dried.  My first step was to remove the label on the plate and wash off any dirt or sticker residue. The dishwasher-safe mod podge recommends cleaning glass surfaces with rubbing alcohol--so I put some on a paper towel and wiped it clean before I started with my decoupa

Last week I tried setting fire to my alcohol inks for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised by the results. So after a trip to Dollar Tree provided some mirrored candle plates, hubby asked what I thought they would look like if I fired the ink on them too. I couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I just had to try it! Just like last week, I cleared off a heatproof surface (my stove top with an old cookie sheet on it) and cleaned the surface off (this time with glass cleaner and then with rubbing alcohol). I grabbed my alcohol inks , some 90% rubbing alcohol , and an eye dropper . After I had all of my supplies out, I cleared them all off of the stove top and out of the way of any future flames. I grabbed a few colors of ink and dripped them so that I had ink covering most of the surface. I learned from my trial run on the tile last week that you need more ink and rubbing alcohol on the surface than you'd think to keep the flame burning across the surf

A long while back, I watched a video where someone set their alcohol ink on fire on a ceramic tile. I thought, well hey, that's cool, but what's the point? It seemed a bit like a stunt to me, so I never tried it. But the video popped back up on my Pinterest feed and I was like, what the heck, I guess I'll give it a try and see what the fuss is about. So, I gathered my supplies: Alcohol Inks (I used Ranger brand for this project), a 6-inch ceramic tile (these cost about 50 cents a piece at your local hardware store), some 90% rubbing alcohol (I bought mine at Target), an eye dropper, a heatproof surface (I used my ceramic stove top and a little old cookie sheet), and a lighter (long handled would work best).  I removed all alcohol based items from the stove so only the sheet pan and my tile were on it, and I turned on the hood fan (see, I was being careful, Mom :)). Having a pot lid to set on top of it if it got out of hand and a fire extinguisher nearb

A couple months ago I made some cute bowls using the funny pages from the Sunday paper  (follow the link for the  original post ). They were a lot of fun and could be used decoratively, but I wanted to be able to use them for snacks or even my Saturday morning cereal. So I used some dishwasher safe mod podge to glue the paper on. I followed the instructions diligently and even allowed extra dry time between layers. Then it said I would have to wait at least 30 days for the glue to cure before I could put it in the dishwasher. I waited 62 days (I just set them on a shelf bottom up and forgot about them through the end of the year). So today was the fated day. The dishwasher was half loaded with plenty of room on the top rack to put the bowls and not have them touch anything else while washing. I filled the bottom rack as normal and ran them through a wash (with the "pots and pan" wash and "heated dry" cycles because it's an older dishwasher and thos

Happy New Year! It's that time of the year where I like to reflect on the projects I've made over the past year and share with you some of the most popular and some of my favorites. It's always amazing to look back and see all of the things I've made, and it encourages me to come up with great ideas for the next year. Most Popular Posts Most of the posts that are the "most popular" were posted in January and February of last year. They have had the benefit of being up on the blog the longest, so they have more hits. This one surprised me because I considered it to be a bit of a failed project, but coming in at #1 for hits was my Alcohol Ink Mirrored Candle Plate . I tried spreading ink on this plate in about a dozen different ways, and though it was always cool looking, I never ended up with one I was happy with. Clearly, it's time to revisit that post and try again. My second most popular post of the year embodied many of my alcoh