Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I found the cute design for some Scotty Dogs with bobble heads and bobble tails and thought it was a perfect for a quick project. I set up our printer with some purple PLA and sliced the design in Cura's slicer following the instructions in the design (.2 resolution, 35% infil), but I didn't include the recommended raft. The instructions suggest that a raft will make it easier to get your print off of the print bed without the risk of breaking the "spring" in the head and tail. I thought I'd risk it and just leave it to cool for a while if it stuck. The print took about an hour and came out perfectly. A couple of taps on the edge of the dog with a putty knife and the project came off of the bed easily. (If you're curious, we use the smooth side of the print bed on the Ender 3 version 2 and use hairspray for bed adhesion.) After the first one went so smoothly, I noticed that the shape reminded me of my parent's Miniature Schnauzer so I made one in gray

This week I picked a 3D print project from Thingiverse that I had been eyeing for a while. This adorable balancing bird design was a snap to print. I followed the instructions on the original post and printed the bird with .2 percent resolution and 10% infil. I selected a purple PLA filament for this print because purple is my favorite color (and because it was already in the printer from last week's print ). I started by printed the body of the bird first. I came down to check on the print, and it had already finished. It took about 45 minutes to complete. I printed the wing section next. This on is bigger so it took a bit longer--about an hour and a half--to print. It came out well aside from a little roughness on the edges of the coin holders. Lastly, I printed the twig stand. This one printed about as quickly as the body (45 minutes) and came out clean. Next we had to slide the wings into the body and put coins in the coin holder. We were able to get the bird to balance on

This week's 3D printe r project was a quick print. This Minisaurs miniature dinosaur clip print was a perfect print to squeeze in between other projects and chores. I set the print up using the recommended settings: .2 resolution and 35% infil for printing it in the mini base design size. The instructions said you don't need as much infil as you size it up. The dinosaur is pretty small. I had a hard time taking pictures of it while it was printing since the print head pretty much covered the whole design. I printed it with purple PLA and the whole project only took about an hour and 45 minutes to print. The print came out perfectly and I was able to open it's jaws by pushing on the back legs pretty much immediately after peeling it off the print bed. This was turned out so well that I kind of want to print some of the other designs in other colors!

While browsing around on Thingiverse for print projects, I found a deck box that can double as a card tray. The Card Game Keeper is designed for UNO sized cards (slightly narrower than poker style playing cards) with decks of 100-120 cards.  I started out printing the bottom of the box with our Ender 3 version 2 . The instructions suggest using gyroid supports for this print. I set the infil to gyroid too, just for consistency's sake, but everything else was standard settings (.2 resolution, 20% infil).  I used white PLA filament  and the print took about 5 hours. It came out fantastic! The supports popped out easily from each of the corners (there was another support for the lip on the bottom of the box, but it came off when I peeled the print off the bed). Then I set up the top of the box to print. The instructions suggested using zig zag supports for this part of the box.  Just like last time, I set the infil to zig zag as well and used otherwise standard settings (.2 resoluti

A little throwback to a bunch of projects I created using Duct Tape. I can't wait to make more! Check them out here: Duct Tape Craft Collection

  I had grand plans to do a bunch of crafting this week, but all I got done was melting some Perler beads. It turned out to be a ton of fun and a good bit of redemption since the first time I tried melting Perler beads, it was a pretty spectacular fail . I got this Harry Potter set to play with. It is a really nice kit with good projects for beginners. It has everything you need except....the tweezers. I strongly recommend tweezers of some kind. They'll make picking and placing the beads a lot easier. The kit comes with the large red plate and the patterns and all the beads you need to make them. I selected some of the smaller designs to get started and was able to fit two of them on the plate. I had the small green plate from my previous kit and was able to fit another design on it. But, since I struggled with my first Perler project, I ironed this set of designs without taking pictures. It went well, so I documented the next set. I did Hermione, Ron, and Luna in the next batch a

I've been resisting resin crafting for quite a while. It's expensive, fiddly, and sometimes toxic. But once I learned about UV resin, I figured it might be a good option to try. It's used specifically for small projects, doesn't need to be mixed with a hardener, is less toxic, and sets in minutes. After trying a bunch of air dry glazes on washers, I thought that UV resin might be a good thing to try. During prime days, a starter kit from Mr. Resin went on sale and I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. The kit came with resin, two resin spatula/stirrers, two resin cups for mixing, and a uv light. There were pretty minimal instructions with the kit. I had seen some YouTube videos of people using UV resin, but I was left to guess about a lot of things. So, it was time to do some experimenting. I bought a resin mold kit for making jewelry, though not everything in the kit is ideal for UV resin, but it was a good place to start. You will also need a silicone ma