Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

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