Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

This is one of those weird projects that I knew I had to try as soon as I saw the design on Thingiverse: The Friendly Articulated Slug . If you've seen similar fidget toys in stores, as I have, you understand why I was eager to see if I could get this silly thing to print. I should mention that the first time I tried printing the slug, it failed. I followed (to the best of my knowledge) most of the recommended print settings from the designer, but the thing failed on bed adhesion and ended up a tangle of filament. The first layer didn't look right, though, so when I went to try it again, I scoured the comments (and there are a lot) for some advice. When I came across someone who had success with the printer ( Crealty Ender 3 v2 ) and Slicer (Cura) that I use. Set the layer height to .12mm, wall thickness to .8mm, move the z seam to the back (this setting was new to me--we had to look up how to turn on access to the z seam settings in Cura), Print speed 20 mm/s, initial layer sp

Just a quick silly Thanksgiving themed 3D print this week. I found this pattern for a pull-apart wishbone on Thingiverse and decided I needed to give it a try. I used standard settings (.2 resolution and 20% infil) and some brown pla filament to print this quick project on our printer.  I did have to enlarge the pattern quite a bit in the slicer, though. In the comments, the creator recommended a 2,540% increase, so that's what I went with. The project printed in about an hour and a half and fit together really well. The instructions said if the bones don't fit together tightly, you can use a lighter to adjust. Be really careful, though, a lighter can melt pla very fast. Ours fit together well. I might have to make one in white, too.  

In preparation for Turkey Day, I printed these adorable Turkey Napkin Holders . This set was the smaller paper napkin variety, but they also made a larger version for cloth napkins. This project was printed with an Ender 3 V2 using matte brown PLA filament . I set the slicer at standard resolution (.2) and 10% infil. The print came out cleanly and only took about 30 minutes. So, I immediately printed another one. These turned out adorable, and I look forward to using them for many Thanksgivings to come.

This summer, I picked up some wooden plaques from Michael's with a coupon because I didn't have any. I had no projects in mind, but I knew I'd use them eventually. Months ago, I spray painted two of them white and they'd been sitting in my craft cart since then just waiting to be made into something. (They were unfinished pine plaques, so it took several coats of spray paint to turn them solid white.) I found a website with free printable greeting cards  and found one that I thought would work well as a little sign and used the crop and resize tools in Word (top right when you click on the photo) to get it to a size that would fit on my wooden plaque. Then I taped a piece of white tissue paper to a piece of card stock. Make sure to tape down any loose bits so they don't get caught when they go through the printer. I put the tissue covered card stock in the paper tray of my ink jet printer . The first attempt was covered in ink--I hadn't taped it tight enough. So