Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Last week I shared that we got a new 3D printer . We've been having a blast trying new projects . This week, my husband wanted to try a lithophane. He found the instructions on this blog: ShapeWays Tutorial Tuesday: Lightning Fast Lithophanes with Cura . For those of you new to printing, Cura is a slicing program that takes the files you download from websites like Thingiverse and prepares them for your printer. The article recommended uploading a photo in Cura, then using a program called MeshLab to simplify the print and then slice it for your printer in Cura. So we chose a photo of our dog that had good contrast and used the settings and steps from the article. Then we let it print.  It was mostly an experiment, and it was really fun to watch it print. The finished print was about 4 inches square and turned out much better than we both hoped. The above photo is lit with a flashlight. It's really amazing the detail that was achieved once it's lit. It's a bit weird l

Hubby and I got a 3d printer . It's been a couple of weeks of bed leveling and a failed attempt at Benchy (the little boat that's often used as a benchmark print to make sure everything is working). We've both learned quite a lot about how fussy these printers can be. Hubby was getting very frustrated but ended up ordering better springs and flipping our glass print plate over and then everything started working much better. We got our little boat printed and a little pop top pry bar and a playing card tray and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. So, it was time to print something for the blog! We started printing these adorable leaf earrings . I don't wear earrings, but these were large statement earrings, so I figured these would be perfect to turn into some kind of necklace. It's only like our 4th project on the new printer and certainly the most detailed and tiny print job yet, so what could go wrong? Our first attempt got a bit tangled up in the outlin

Check out some of Sarah Jane's Craft Blog's Office Supply Crafts to celebrate Back to School!  

Last week I made a wreath out of old blue jeans . I used some of the leftovers from that project to make a hanging pocket for this week's project.  When I was cutting and tearing up the blue jeans to make my wreath last week, I saved out the pockets on all of the jeans. I wasn't quite sure what I'd do with them, but I figured they were worth saving. I decided to try hanging one of the pockets up, so I used a piece of the seam edging and glued it to the edges of the pocket with hot glue . If you had an eagle eye in last week's post, you may have noticed that one of the flowers that I featured, I didn't end up using on the wreath. I made this flower out of more of that seam edging rolled up. As I rolled the strip of fabric up (while gluing it with more hot glue), I angled the fabric just a bit to create a domed appearance. \ I also used a couple of the leaves that I dyed with alcohol ink (thinned the ink with a little bit of rubbing alcohol and painted it on). I put l

We're in that odd part of the year between the 4th of July and Fall...what most people just call summer--but it's a holiday-less blur of heat and school prep for me. After I put away the few patriotic decorations a couple weeks ago, I realized I didn't have a summer wreath to hang on the door. I didn't want to make an extra trip to the store to buy supplies, so I decided I would make due with what I had. I have a couple of wreath forms in my craft stash, so I just had to decide what I was going to use for flowers. I thought about felt. I have quite a bit of felt, and I've made felt flower wreaths before (a few times ). I had a small pile of torn denim that didn't make the donate pile, so I thought...I could try making flowers out of jeans. Cue the hour long browse of jean wreaths and jean flowers on pinterest. Most of them involved cutting careful patterns and sewing. I'm far too impatient for that, so I thought I'd mostly wing it--most of the best cra