Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

A couple weeks ago, I printed one of these dice trays with our 3D printer . I thought it turned out great so I printed another. Then my hubby said he wanted one that was bigger, so I increased the width of the original print files and printed a 3rd! All I did was stretch the file in my slicing program before printing so the dice tray area was pretty much a square instead of a rectangle. Stretching the width kept the dimensions of the dice rack at the top/back of the tray the same while making the dice area bigger. Then I printed it with some Black PLA as directed by the original post (.2 resolution, 15% infil). After the trays printed, I cut some felt to fit inside the tray and used a layer of tacky glue to stick it to the tray.  The post on Thingiverse also gave dimensions for back and side bumpers, I adjusted those for my new width and glued those onto the sides. I used a craft/popsicle stick to spread the glue and wiped off the excess with a wet paper towel.  These turned out awe

Check out all of the blog's alcohol ink projects here: Alcohol Ink Craft Collection  

This week a dice tray caught my attention on Thingiverse. This project also had the benefit of bringing together 3D printing with regular crafting, which is right in my wheel house. I printed this project using the instructions on the post on Thingiverse: .2 resolution, 15% infil. Other than that--the print had no special instructions. As long as your bed is level, this is a simple print. It's printed using black PLA filament and the entire print took about 8 hours. It was dark when it finished printing, but it turned out perfectly. You may have to let this one cool on the bed for a bit before prying it up since it has such a large flat area--mine was fairly well stuck on there. Next up, the crafty bit. I dug through my craft stash to find some felt and I opted to use a rotary cutter to cut it nice and straight. The original post has the exact dimensions listed for the felt, so I used their dimensions and cut the pieces out with a rotary cutter . For the side pieces, I used the

This 3D print project is easily our most useful. We printed both the  drip catcher  and the  cup drainer  several months ago and they work perfectly! I'm so glad we printed them! The bit that came off of the cup drainer while printing is actually a support (meant to come off after the print is done). This print was one of our first ones with our 3D printer . It had a few issues in the print, but they still turned out well enough to be totally functional. I marvel at how well they work every week while I'm doing laundry. I used to hate buying laundry detergent in bulk (even though it's better for the environment and the pocketbook), but the drip catcher and cup drainer make these giant containers so much more user friendly.   View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sarah Jane Setnes Dale (@sarahjanescraftblog) Did you know that Sarah Jane's Craft Blog is on Instagram , Facebook , and Twitter ? Be sure to give us a follow!

Some people dye real eggs every Easter, I dye plastic ones. I have tried most methods of putting alcohol ink on plastic Easter eggs . So this year, I opted to just play around with a paint brush and see what happened. I laid down my craft mat and a few plastic Easter eggs. I opted to use Piñata inks for this project because they are highly saturated in color and run less than other inks. I used some cheap synthetic paint brushes and a plastic palette for the inks. I opened the eggs so they could rest on their flat open surface. Then I just painted on color. I found it worked best to cover the egg in a wash of color (which goes a bit faster if you drop a couple of drips of rubbing alcohol into the ink) and then ad other colors over top to create patterns. To give you an idea of how the original egg color affects inking, I spread the same color (blue violet) onto a blue and light green egg. You can see that the color looks very different. I used the larger flat brush to rotate simil

We went to Big Lots a while back to look at patio furniture and I picked up this small ceramic bowl (it's described as a fruit bowl on the label, but it's the perfect size for keys or coins or jewelry). I have inked some small   white   bowls from Big Lots in the past, but the finish on this bowl was much glossier, so I decided not to use the plastic wrap method (which works really well on the bowls I got from Big Lots in the past because the finish was a bit porous). I decided to try to make an ink rose. I've seen them done on ceramic tiles and plasticized paper (like Yupo or Nara), but I hadn't seen it done in a bowl, so I was winging it which, to be honest, is my favorite kind of craft. I got out my craft mats , rubbing alcohol , a can of air , my hand bulb blower , and some purple alcohol inks. I started by dripping a couple of drops of Boysenberry and a couple drops of rubbing alcohol in the bottom of the bowl and blowing it around in circles with the canned air

After last week's printed Bunny Egg Holders , I was on the search for more Easter themed print projects for the 3D Printer . I came across these Window Picture ornaments with Easter scenes and knew they'd be a quick and fun project. I printed the first Easter ornament using standard settings (.2 resolution 20% infil) using white PLA filament . The first ornament printed perfectly. It took a couple of hours to print, so I started up a second different design right after it finished. Since it finished when it was dark, I didn't get any pictures of the second one printing, but it turned out perfectly just like the first one. I've got these hanging in a window right now (just as the original designer intended), but I'm sure they'd look great hanging up just about anywhere in the house this time of year. Check out more Easter projects here: Easter Craft Collection Check out more 3D Printing projects here: 3D Printing Collection  

As I was looking for some new printing projects to make with our 3D printer , I found this cute bunny-shaped egg holder . The design comes in two sizes--one for Cadbury Eggs and one for Kinder Eggs. You can adjust for other sizes as needed when slicing the design to prepare it for your printer. I used some white PLA filament and set the bunny to print using standard settings (.2 resolution) but with 10% infil. The bunny took about an hour and a half to print and came out pretty clean. The eye looked better on the top of the design than it did on the bottom/bed side, but otherwise, it was perfect. As soon as it printed, I dug out a Cadbury Egg and tested to make sure it worked. It was just the right size, and I set it up to print another!

Since it's St. Patrick's Day this week, I thought I'd share a print project for the holiday. I picked this cute Shamrock Vase from the designs on Thingiverse to print on our 3D printer . I opened the design file in Cura and noticed that unlike the previous designs that I printed in vase mode, this one was a solid column. So, in addition to the usual settings for a vase (.2 res, 0% infil, Spiralize Outer Contour), I also had to set the top layers to 0 so it would print as an open vase. The original design file was also quite large and laying on it's side. So, I rotated it, and set it at about 37% it's original size. I used green PLA  to print the vase, but I noticed as it printed, it was over extruding. There were bumps all over the outside surface. It reminds me of a music box cylinder. The usual culprit for over-extrusion is the temp setting isn't quite right--which is odd since we've printed other projects with this filament at that temp (200 degrees) tha

Always on the hunt for useful things to print on our 3D printer, I came across this cute Alohomora key rack . For those of you who aren't big Harry Potter nerds, Alohomora is the spell used to unlock or open, so it's a perfect fit for a place to hold your keys. This print design is a pretty simple one. I sliced it in Cura and used the default settings (.2 resolution, 20% infil). I left the design size at 100%, but had to position it diagonally across the print bed to get it to fit. It didn't take long for the design to start to look like the finished product. I used a Black PLA to print the key rack. I enjoyed checking on this print as it went, it's always fun to see it make the patterns in the middle of a design (for prints that aren't solid). After the tops of the letters finished, it just had the hooks left. The print for this project went really  smoothly. The print took about 6 hours and the only issues I had were with some wisps of plastic on some of the poi