Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Last week I shared my ongoing quest to find the perfect recipe for  homemade fire starters . While we were camping this year, we also tried some experimental campfire recipes that I thought I'd share. In past years we've made  campfire quesadillas ,  campfire eclairs , and  loaded fries . This year's experimental recipe was bacon wrapped mozzarella sticks. This genius idea came from a post on Pinterest with really simple directions, so I thought we'd give it a whirl. I mean, it's bacon and cheese...so there's no real losing here. We started by packing a box of frozen mozzarella sticks in with our camping food. The day before we wanted to grill these, I put them in the fridge to thaw out (we camped in a cabin--but a slow thaw in the cooler would work too). They may not need a whole day in the fridge, but they need to be thawed out enough that you can stick a toothpick in them to keep the bacon wrapped tightly. Right before grilling, I wrapped...

It's that time of year again. The time when I get ready for camping and backyard fires by making a big batch of homemade fire starters. After trying out a few different methods . But last year we tried 3 different fuels and they all worked great, so I am only tweaking some small details for this year's batch. I bought new tinfoil pans this year. In past years I had used round pans (because they sell them every where), but this year, I opted for square cake pan style tinfoil pans so they'd be easier to pour wax out of. They worked great! I set my tinfoil pan onto the ceramic stove top burner and turned it to low. I used some cheap candles from Walmart this year and some leftover old tea lights I had floating around. I pulled the sticker off the bottom of the new candle and pulled the wick out from the bottom, then I put the candle in the pan and let it melt. While the candle was melting, on the other side of my stove, I laid out some wax paper and my fi...

A few weeks ago, we made another batch of Spray Paint Marbled Paper , so I've been trying to come up with projects to use the paper. A quick and easy project is to make them into bookmarks. I used a rotary cutter to cut my marbled paper into strips. A paper cutter would also would be a great option. I opted to cut the bookmarks the width of my ruler and 6 inches long.  After my paper was cut into strips, I used some mod podge to glue two similar strips together to make the bookmarks double sided. I used mod podge painted on very thinly with a brush--just enough to stick the two sides together, but not to get the paper wet. The glue didn't need to be perfect since I was planning on laminating the bookmarks. I set the glued bookmarks underneath a heavy book and let them dry. After they had dried for a couple hours, I trimmed any edges that didn't match up perfectly with a scissors. Then I warmed up my laminator and placed the double-sided bookmarks...

This all started last fall when I bought a wooden plaque to try out a printable transfer paper that you ironed onto unfinished wood. I couldn't get the darn thing to work (my first stab at it turned into a Thanksgiving Plaque that decoupaged). Since my other attempt ended in decoupage, it figured that the second attempt would too. I was going for that rustic transferred look, but this is sort of a faux transfer since it uses mod podge and glues the image directly to the finished surface. I've used this method of printing on tissue paper and decoupaging it a few times, but the first time I used it for photos, I made coasters . So I took my wooden sign/plaque thing and spray painted it white to cover the bad transfer that didn't work. Then I printed out the photo I wanted to transfer/decoupage. I used Word because it's easiest to get the exact dimensions (in inches). Then I covered a couple pieces of heavy card stock (110lb) with a sheet of whi...