Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

So I bought some really inexpensive black and white photos at Big Lots a while back because I thought I could hang them in the guest bedroom.  Well, I painted the guest bedroom earlier this summer and I'm now working on finding stuff to hang on the walls, so I dug these out of storage and wondered why the heck I bought them.  They each had cheesy inspirational sayings on the bottom of them.  So I tried to figure out how I could cover up the words without breaking the bank, since all 4 photos and frames cost about $15 bucks. It simply didn't make sense to pay money to get custom mattes....so I brainstormed and decided I should try out fun foam. The kind you buy at the craft store has a label that says acid free, so they should be ok, at least in the short term as a matte, it's already pretty thick and easy to cut, and the biggest factor--it's super cheap, way cheaper than matte board (and it doesn't require any special tools to cut). So here's what o...

Hubby and I celebrated our anniversary last week, and I wanted to make a geeky gift bag to put a few gifts into as a heartfelt gesture.  I also thought it would be cool.  So I decided I should try to make a Death Star stamp.  I mean, really, who doesn't love the Death Star (you know, except the people of Alderaan and pretty much all of the Rebels, but why split hairs)? I figured the easiest way to make a Death Star stamp would be to make an impression stamp with fun foam . I tested this concept awhile back and made some very basic stamps, but nothing quite this large.  I started by finding a coloring book outline of the Death Star online.   I put my cut out Death Star on top of my foam and drew around it with a ballpoint pen.  I then cut the circle out of the fun foam. Next I drew over the most prominent lines on the Death Star with my ballpoint pen to get a general impression.  The pen doesn't sink in much when drawing on top o...

Fun Foam Stamps Part 3 (see part 1 and part 2) ?  I could make stamps out of foam all day.... :)  But these are a bit different.  They require you to make an impression in the foam and printing the background instead of the foreground.  Fun foam works great for these kinds of stamps because you can use a simple ballpoint pen to create an impression.  I drew a wood grain on one and a simple vine on the other.  I then trimmed the foam and glued it to a piece of cardboard using tacky glue. After a quick testing, I knew these would work great as backgrounds.  I can't wait to test out the wood grain with some brown ink (unfortunately I didn't have any--so I went with green). I created a blank/just because card using the vines, and a thank you card out of the wood grain by stamping a leaf overtop and layering it with a cute house stamp. These have a ton of potential for all kinds of designs.  These were a great proof of concept--...

When I left off, I had just crafted some great stamps made out of fun foam from the dollar store glued onto cardboard.  The leaf shape and the circle shapes proved the concept, but after I saw how they stamped, I knew I needed to make some geometric background patterns. I started out with some strips cut on my paper cutter--half inch and quarter inch. I glued them carefully onto cardboard--eyeballing them as parallel as possible (hey, the end result will look imperfect even if I measure, so why not, right?).  Next up, the ever popular chevron.  I tried just free-hand cutting the shapes, but they were very uneven.  I thought for sure I'd have to measure or print out a pattern...then I had a pretty genius idea (ok, just clever, not really genius). I cut my long narrow rectangle shape, folded it in half, then  cut at an angle.  I then made cuts at the same angle about the same distance apart (again, I eye balled it because I'm impatient and ...

I found this lovely pack of Fun Foam from Dollar Tree in my craft room.  I don't even remember when I bought it, but I knew exactly what I wanted to make with it first: homemade stamps. I cut up some spare cardboard from a box (the non corrugated kind would work even better, but use what you've got). Then I used a scissors to cut out some shapes.  Then I used some tacky glue to glue them onto the cardboard.  Super easy! Next I thought I'd try out some paper punches.  The dollar store fun foam is very thin, so I figured it might work.  I could only fit the fun foam into one of my paper punches--the circle, so I punched out four circles and made a single stamp and a grouping of three the same way as I made the leaves. After the glue dried, I tested out the stamps.  They create rustic impression--a bit imperfect. I immediately got some ideas for other designs (which you'll see in my next post). These are so much fun to make--very chea...

This super simple project is full of potential. Buy a sheet of the extra thick craft foam from your local craft store (you may be able to laminate the thin stuff together with a strong but flexible glue, but I haven't tried it).  Next, carve out your design with a craft knife and use a small pair of scissors to smooth out any ragged edges. In the photo below, you can see how it was not a very clean cut on the curved arms of my meeple pattern, so I cleaned that part up with a small sharp scissors. Once you've cut out your shape in foam, glue it to a very thick piece of cardboard or a scrap of wood. I laminated some thick non-corrugated cardboard together to make my stamp and it's held up to being painted and washed off a couple of times without problems.   Once the stamp is done, go to town with your paint.  I used mine to make some homemade gift wrap out of brown craft paper from the dollar store and some leftover craft acrylic paints. ...