Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I have been wracking my brain all week trying to figure out what to do for this week's craft post. I knew I wanted to do something Halloween-y since the post is set to go up the day before. After much hemming and hawing, I remembered I still had a bunch of the craft bottle caps I used to make Patriotic Pins with last year, so I set out to make some Halloween/Fall pins. The bottle caps are 1 inch on the inside (as are the kind you salvage off glass soda bottles and beer bottles--so both will work). I did a google search for Halloween art and chose ones that I thought would look good as 1-inch circles. I probably saved twice as many designs to my computer as I ended up printing. The icon size ends up being a good indicator of what will look good in the small size. Then I use Word to print them out. Word has a handy feature that will tell you how large the photo is in inches when you're resizing it, so I made all of the photos a smidge smaller than 1 inch tall and wi...

I've made a couple sets of magnets with bottle caps in the past. I saved my own bottle caps from a variety of beverages and spray painted them when I made the magnets, but I found some crafting caps at Tuesday Morning for $1.99 for a bag. They were navy blue, so with Memorial Day coming up, I thought it would be a great opportunity to make some patriotic pins. So I searched the internet for some images that would be the right size and shape. I inserted them into a Word file so that I could size them to 1 inch. I printed them out on some matte photo paper and then cut them into strips so that they could be cut out with a one inch circle punch . After the circles were punched, I used some Tacky Glue to glue the circles into the bottle caps. Any glue that would keep the paper from floating up in the Diamond Glaze is fine. After they have been glued down, let them dry for a few minutes to make sure they won't float. Then fill the caps with the ...

The last time I made bottle cap magnets , I sprayed them black. The finished product turned out well but a bit dark, so after my husband's urging, I decided to make another batch of magnets using white spray paint this time. I'm guessing it had something to do with the paper turning a bit transparent when the glue soaked in and the dark background absorbing light instead of reflecting it. At any rate, the white ones turned out even better. So I sprayed my bottle caps with some white spray paint (cue the riveting photo of spray painting). I like to use a cardboard box to catch the spray. My white spray paint turned out to be a rust corrosion variety (I'm guessing I didn't read the can closely when I bought it), but it turned out fine, a bit textured, but still did the job. Next I found a bunch of images on the internet that would shrink down to a one inch square or circle so that they could be punched out with a circle punch. Since these are for person...

I have been saving bottle caps from glass soda bottles and the stray beer bottle for a while now, figuring that I could totally craft something with them, so this week I've got my first bottle cap project. First I spray painted them all black. You could leave them in all of their original multicolored glory if you'd like (or they may all be the same color if you're an especially loyal drinker). 2 coats over the backs, then I flipped them and did another two coats over the inside of the cap. Next I printed out some photos from the internet onto some matte photo paper . I chose a wide variety from personal photos in black and white and color and a bunch of graphics from google searches. I figured I'd print off a ton to see what worked best. Then I grabbed my 1 inch circle punch and punched out circles. Not all of the images fit neatly into circles, so I ended up printing off even more. Then I put a bit of Diamond Glaze ( Paper Glaze or Dime...