Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

This has been one of those projects that was a lot different than I expected it to be. There were several twists and turns before I finally ended up with a finished project. It all started out with a Starbucks cocoa tin that I rescued from the recycling bin. I hate throwing out tins. I always want to try to reuse them whenever possible, so I figured I'd just throw some spray paint on it and call it a day. That was a month and a half ago. The first strange thing that happened was that the spray paint reacted with whatever paint they used for the label on this tin. I've never had that happen before. I've spray painted quite a few tins over the years. After the paint dried, it was lumpy, crackled, and the indented Starbuck's logo was quite prominent. So I thought, hey, it's already kinda ruined, why not test something out. So I grabbed a jar of spackle and filled the logo in and grabbed my sandpaper (and a damp paper towel). I rubbed off most of the excess spack

Shortly after I started lighting alcohol ink on fire, I decorated some of these square candle holders using the method . They worked really well because of their nearly flat sides. So when I found a pair of these candle holders in my craft stash, I knew I wanted to fire the ink again. I set my table up with a heat resistant craft mat , a cork trivet , a small sheet pan covered in tinfoil, and my lighter. After this photo, I set my alcohol ink well off to the side. I started out with some Wild Plum and Purple Twilight . I dripped the ink in a couple of spots and then lit the ink. The fire will spread the ink out and then the flame will go out as it runs out of alcohol to burn. It often moves towards the center of the ink, creating those lights or dots in the middle of the ink. I continued to add drops of ink and light them on fire until the whole side of my candle holder was filled. Then I switched candle holders and set the other one aside to cool and dry a bit. The ink sets when you

  It's been a hectic week here, so I thought I share an update on how last week's project turned out. The weather here was a fairly steamy and stormy for a good portion of the week, so the bricks only got a couple days out in the sun outside. Even with the lack of sunshine, the bricks dried in about a week. I suspect if the weather cooperated, it would have taken even less time We also found out that our receipt paper bricks blackened a bit in the sun. I was kinda hoping the thermal receipt paper would react a bit, but it wasn't terribly spectacular. I've bagged up all the bricks from my first two batches in a gallon zip top bag. I've left it unsealed for now, just in case there's any moisture left inside. As they dry, the bricks/logs go from wet and squishy to the touch, to damp/cold and spongy to the touch, then to dry but slightly spongy, and lastly to dry and hard as a rock. I'll be sure to share photos when we get a chance to burn these homemade logs,

Ok, so this is kind of a weird one, but it's been a weird summer. So here we are. I usually do a post each summer where I make fire starters for our annual camping trip. Since cabins were closed until the week before we normally would go camping, I didn't risk making a reservation, and alas, no camping trip this summer, even though it's probably the safest vacation you could go on this year. At any rate, we've been having fires in our backyard--usually to clean up after yard work. That coupled with cleaning out our file cabinets this spring and putting a ton of stuff in boxes to shred or destroy, here I am making pressed paper logs. Because, why not|? I made a test batch of these to make sure they worked last week, but each time we make more logs, we come up with better ways to do it. Using a blender is the easiest way to get your paper slurry. You could soak paper for a day or two and then stir it until it breaks up, but I'm super impatient, so blender-ized it is.

Over the years, I've had some practice at spray painting objects to look like a starry night. I've painted boxes ,  trays , altar candles , and even composition notebooks . So when I came across this tin with a Terry Redlin scene on it (probably a Boy Scout popcorn tin from ages ago), I decided it needed the galaxy treatment. I got a cardboard box and a can of black spray paint and took the tin out on my deck. I gave it a couple of good coats of black paint and let it dry between coats. After the black paint had a chance to set completely, I came back a few days later and a ton of colors of spray paint. I splattered and sprayed purples and teals and blues and pink paint all over the tin until it look like 1991 threw up on it. It darkened a bit as as it dried, but it was still pretty ridiculous. After the colors dried, I came back and knocked them down with some black and silver paint sprayed over the top. I continued to layer and splatter paint until I liked the way it looked.