Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Our 3D printer has been a bit unreliable lately, so I haven't been making too many projects. One of the last things I printed was this great puzzle box lid holder . When the print didn't turn out perfectly, I took the opportunity to try decoupaging on printed PLA.  I used standard print settings (.2 resolution and 20% infil) using some purple PLA . The print took about 12 hours on our little printer . When it was done, it looked stringy, but otherwise not too bad. When I pulled it off the bed, the base layer was discolored and full of the hairspray I used to help with bed adhesion. I was able to clean up the stringy bits without any issues, but the base level remained marked up no matter how much I cleaned (and lightly sanded) it. Since I used some Tacky Glue to attach some felt to a 3D print project in the past and it has held up really well, I was pretty sure Mod Podge (which has the same base--PVA glue) should work well too. I found a piece of scrapbook paper in my craft...

Just a quick 3D printing project this week. These cute shark clips were a simple hour-long print. I printed them on our printer with black PLA using the recommended settings (.2 resolution and 60% infil).  After the first one went well, I printed one in purple PLA . These were a simple and fun print--just what I wanted for this week's project. :)  

When I saw these nifty thumb book page holders available to print, they looked like a simple and useful project.  I used some black PLA on our printer with standard settings (.2 resolution, 20% infil). The first one came out a bit stringy, but otherwise perfect. It printed in about 30 minutes, so I printed a second one. Now I have two of these lovely book page holders!  

I was looking for a fun Valentine's Day print to try and I came across these cute spinning heart ornaments . They looked like the perfect little decoration to hang in a window or on a Valentine-themed tree. I used the recommended settings from the posted instructions. They called for standard settings (.2 resolution and 20% infil) with supports that touch the build plate (very minimal). The designer also suggested turning on ironing (which was a new setting for me).  I used red PLA on our printer and each heart ended up taking about 3 hours to print. Unfortunately, I'm still struggling with dark areas of filament in my prints. I printed the first two at 195 degrees (nozzle temp) and the last one at 190 (which is the lowest recommended for the PLA). The lower temp helped a bit, and it's hard to see in the photos since I put the best sides forward, but there were still quite a few black marks on the ornaments. Nevertheless, this is a cute pattern that I'd recommend. Asi...

I had an idea to turn a photo my brother took of the moon into a lithophane, so I thought I'd share with you how I made it happen.  NASA has images of the moon that will totally work for this project, too. I used the website lithophane maker  to crop my moon photo down to a circle and adjusted the size of the frame and hang tag. It took a bit of fiddling to get it set up the way that I wanted. Once I was happy with it, I imported the file into my slicer and just used standard settings (.2 resolution and 20% infil). If I were to do the project again, and I think I will (Pluto is calling my name), I'd set it to 100% infil so you don't get any shadows of the shapes the printer makes coming through in the final print job. I printed it on our 3D printer with white PLA . The print took about 3 hours, and we had to run it a few times because our printer was struggling with burning filament (leaving dark marks on the print). We turned down the temp to 190 degrees, and it seemed to...

Last week I printed a sorting hat ornament, so when I was trying to decide what to print next, I immediately went looking for other ornaments that I could print with brown filament before I switched to another color. So, with that in mind, I found a cute gingerbread man inspired by Gingy from Shrek.  A gingerbread man was the perfect thing to print on our printer with the brown filament I already had loaded! So I sliced the design using .2 resolution and the recommended 80% infil. Gingy took about an hour to print and turned out so well, that I went ahead and printed a second. Of course, I could have gone to the trouble of pausing the print and finishing the icing with white filament, but I've never done that before, so I wimped out and opted to paint the icing. I tried a few methods which failed miserably (see the messy job above). I tried spreading a thin layer on a paper plate and stamping the ornament. It didn't transfer much paint, so I used a foam paint brush to "...

If you're a regular blog follower, you may know that I have a small Harry Potter tree that I've been creating ornaments for over the years. This year, I stumbled upon a design for a Sorting Hat ornament and immediately knew I needed to print it.   I used the recommended settings for an earlier version of the Sorting Hat (.2 resolution and 25% infil) and used some brown PLA on our 3D Printer . The print took a bit over 2 hours and came out great! After I took a few photos, I immediately hung it up our our tree!

This week I printed a cute design for a reindeer ornament with a nose the perfect size to fit a Lindor Truffle.  I printed the design on our printer using standard resolution (.2) and the recommended 15% infil. I used some matte brown PLA . They took about 50 minutes to print and came out great!   

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been printing some adorable little Halloween keychains on our 3D printer . I made ghosts and pumpkins , so all that was left was the bats . I printed these bat keychains using the recommended settings (.2 resolution and 15% infil) with some black PLA . I did print one in orange, on accident (I was trying to print the pumpkin, but the file names were cut off and I couldn't tell which was which).  These little bats printed well and finished in about 25 minutes. Now I have to go hunting my craft stash for more keychains to connect to them. I kept the orange mistake bat in my photos of the collection since I knew the black prints would be hard to photograph. It's a bit easier to see the details on the orange. I bet they'd be cute in purple, too.

It's been a dreary, cool, rainy, and busy week here. So after last week's cute ghost keychains , I swapped out my filament to orange and made the pumpkin keychains from the same designer. These little orange pumpkins brought a bit of brightness into my life on an otherwise dreary week (weatherwise). I set up the print as recommended (.2 resolution and 15% infil) using some orange PLA on our printer. The print took about 20 minutes and came out perfectly. These are really cute and quick. I think they'd make great pins with the hanging circle removed. I grabbed a few more keychains from my craft stash and clipped the pumpkins into place. I look forward to tossing these in with the candy for trick-or-treaters. There's a bat keychain, too. Do you think I should print that one next?