Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

It's that time of the year again...when I make homemade fire starters for camping . This year I stuck with the tried and true and made a batch and a half of lint firestarters. I collected lint from my dryer and placed it into the compartments of a cardboard egg carton. Then I melted some old candles in a tinfoil pan on my stovetop. Then I poured the wax over the lint until the tops were pretty much covered and the wax was beginning to saturate the bottom of the carton (put on parchment or wax paper to keep wax from getting on your counter or stovetop). Then let the wax solidify and they are ready to use. We took ours on our first camping trip of the year and they worked great. Put one or two sections of the egg carton (just tear it apart) under a log in your fire and start it. These work about as well as store-bought firestarters (we timed them one year) and are made with stuff most people just throw out. They certainly helped us to enjoy our camping trip.

We just got back from our annual camping vacation, so I thought I'd share with you, once again, that the best homemade firestarters are made from dryer lint. They aren't pretty, but they work well and are easy to make. I stuff a cardboard egg carton with dryer lint instead of throwing it in the trash. Then I melt an old candle in a tinfoil tray on my stovetop (If you had a candle making pot , that would work even better). Then I carefully pour the melted wax over the lint until the top is mostly covered and the wax is starting to bleed through the bottom of the egg carton (make sure to set it on parchment or wax paper to keep your counter clean). Then let it cool and it's ready to go. Tear off a section of the egg carton and light it on fire (the one in the photo above is actually a pencil shaving firestarter that I made last year and we had some leftover--I didn't get a photo of the lint ones in action this year, but they look pretty similar on the fire). Over the yea...

It's that time of the year again--time to make fire starters for camping and backyard bonfires. It's been a couple of years (darn the plague) and my stockpiles had dwindled, so I dug out the reject candles and got to work. After many attempts at fire starters , the old standby of dryer lint in a cardboard egg carton with melted wax works the best. The second best, is colored pencil shavings. I empty my electric pencil sharpener into a zip top bag and keep an egg carton in the laundry room until I have enough material saved up to make fire starters. Next, I melt some old candles. This year I was using a candle that my sister generously donated to the cause. It smelled like berries (bonus).  I melted the candle in a foil pan on our ceramic cooktop on medium low. One of these years I'll buy a proper candle making pot with a spout, but until then, this works just fine for fire starters. The egg cartons were on parchment paper (as some wax does soak through). I used the co...

  It's been a hectic week here, so I thought I share an update on how last week's project turned out. The weather here was a fairly steamy and stormy for a good portion of the week, so the bricks only got a couple days out in the sun outside. Even with the lack of sunshine, the bricks dried in about a week. I suspect if the weather cooperated, it would have taken even less time We also found out that our receipt paper bricks blackened a bit in the sun. I was kinda hoping the thermal receipt paper would react a bit, but it wasn't terribly spectacular. I've bagged up all the bricks from my first two batches in a gallon zip top bag. I've left it unsealed for now, just in case there's any moisture left inside. As they dry, the bricks/logs go from wet and squishy to the touch, to damp/cold and spongy to the touch, then to dry but slightly spongy, and lastly to dry and hard as a rock. I'll be sure to share photos when we get a chance to burn these homemade logs, ...

Ok, so this is kind of a weird one, but it's been a weird summer. So here we are. I usually do a post each summer where I make fire starters for our annual camping trip. Since cabins were closed until the week before we normally would go camping, I didn't risk making a reservation, and alas, no camping trip this summer, even though it's probably the safest vacation you could go on this year. At any rate, we've been having fires in our backyard--usually to clean up after yard work. That coupled with cleaning out our file cabinets this spring and putting a ton of stuff in boxes to shred or destroy, here I am making pressed paper logs. Because, why not|? I made a test batch of these to make sure they worked last week, but each time we make more logs, we come up with better ways to do it. Using a blender is the easiest way to get your paper slurry. You could soak paper for a day or two and then stir it until it breaks up, but I'm super impatient, so blender-ized it is....

Last week I shared my ongoing quest to find the perfect recipe for  homemade fire starters . While we were camping this year, we also tried some experimental campfire recipes that I thought I'd share. In past years we've made  campfire quesadillas ,  campfire eclairs , and  loaded fries . This year's experimental recipe was bacon wrapped mozzarella sticks. This genius idea came from a post on Pinterest with really simple directions, so I thought we'd give it a whirl. I mean, it's bacon and cheese...so there's no real losing here. We started by packing a box of frozen mozzarella sticks in with our camping food. The day before we wanted to grill these, I put them in the fridge to thaw out (we camped in a cabin--but a slow thaw in the cooler would work too). They may not need a whole day in the fridge, but they need to be thawed out enough that you can stick a toothpick in them to keep the bacon wrapped tightly. Right before grilling, I wrapped...