Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

A couple of years ago I made a heart shaped bowl covered in heart shaped tissue paper . During this project, I learned how to punch tissue paper with a paper punch. So, for Valentine's Day, I decided to pull out the old paper punch and tissue paper yet again for another project. I folded up my tissue paper into several layers (If it's not punching, adjust your layers. A couple of layers of paper is usually not enough, but if it's too thick, you may have a hard time punching through it.) and punched a pile of hearts. I also cut two pieces of  clear contact paper ( clear sticky vinyl shelf liner ) that were roughly the same size. I peeled the paper backing off of one of my pieces of clear contact paper and laid it on the table sticky side up. Then I began setting my hearts on the sticky paper. I intentionally laid them on haphazardly in all directions and sometimes overlapping to avoid any clear patterns. I continued to stick my hearts on th...

I have a bit sickness, a crafty sickness, where I look at something--any random thing--and find myself asking the question, "Can I ink that?" This was totally the case when I was emptying some packaging and saw these small pieces of thin chipboard that had a slightly glossy white surface. Chipboard is the thin cardboard that's used in cereal and cracker boxes, but this chipboard was even thinner. Because of the glossy white surface, I thought stamping them with ink might just work. I took out my alcohol inks , a craft mat , and my homemade applicator (it's just a block of wood with a piece of double thick craft foam and the hook side of hook and loop glued on top). I chose some bright colors and got to work. I randomly dripped a few dots of each color onto the felt square that I stuck onto the velcro of my applicator. Then I stamped over the surface of the whole piece of cardboard. It felt like there was just a bit too much white space, so I...

I'll admit it, I'm a bit of a hoarder. Especially when it comes to stuff I can use for craft projects. I have a couple of boxes full of greetings cards, just waiting to be turned into something. So I dug out some of my old Christmas cards and some ornament shaped dies that I found a Tuesday Morning earlier this year. If you have a die cutting machine , you could use circles , stars , or ornaments to cut out your cards. If you don't have a die cut machine, a mason jar lid or a star template to trace around would be easy options. I cut out a bunch of different sized ornaments from my cards. I found that it was often easier to run the dies through upside down (A Spacer, C plate , Card, Die, B plate) so I could see what the die was cutting. It worked out fine since the shape was simple and the card stock wasn't difficult to cut. When I was done, I ended up with a pile of paper ornaments. You could hang these on the tree as is or use the ones without wri...

Earlier this month I embossed aluminum foil with my Cuttlebug , so now I want to try to emboss aluminum tape (like the kind you buy at a hardware store) to see if it's as easy and has results that are as good as the regular aluminum foil. Because of the paper backing on the tape, the foil holds its emboss very well. All you have to do is cut a piece to fit inside your embossing folder. I ran it through using the traditional plate order for embossing: A spacer plate, B plate, embossing folder with your tape inside, and another B plate on top. It gave a nice clean emboss with a single run through on the machine. After I had successfully proved that the foil tape ran through the machine perfectly, I thought I'd try to cut out a shape using a Cuttlebug die . It didn't cut as neatly as the foil did. The edges weren't quite as neatly cut, but the shape came out without any problems. Now that I know the foil tape runs through the machine so well, I ...

I had some 4th of July napkins leftover and decided it might be fun to try embossing them with my Cuttlebug . This particular napkin is "dinner sized" but has a wide embossed border. So I lined my embossing folder right up along the embossed edge of the napkin. It was wider than the machine's opening, so I folded the edge over. I was worried there would be a pronounced crease after running through the machine, but I was pleasantly surprised. I stacked the plates up in the regular embossing order: A spacer plate, B plate, Embossing folder with napkin inside, and another B plate on top. It ran through the machine perfectly. The napkin came out great. I have tried a couple other larger napkins with less luck, but the wide border on this one made for a perfect emboss. I expect that solid color napkins that are narrow or smaller in size (like cocktail napkins) would work even better.

In last week's post , I used my Cuttlebug to emboss layered aluminum foil. I loved the way it turned, but I thought I could make the foil even better. So I grabbed my alcohol inks and craft mat and tried out a few different techniques. I always thought this embossing folder looked a bit like a sun, so I picked out my yellow, orange and red inks and started stamping in layers. The section was the sun, stamped in, appropriately enough, Sunshine Yellow . Next was, Sunset Orange , then Terra Cotta and Watermelon Red  at the top. I added the colors to the felt applicator and stamped each layer until I got good coverage. After I pulled the felt off of the applicator, I noticed it still had a fair bit of ink on it, so I rubbed it with my thumb over this next piece of foil. Of course rubbing the felt onto the foil with your fingers will mean that your fingers get full of ink (so wear gloves or be prepared to have some vaguely red fingers for a day or two--most of ...

I got my Cuttlebug about a year ago (update: Cricut has discontinued the Cuttlebug, the closest alternative is the Sixxis Big Shot ), and I'm just beginning to scratch the surface of everything that you can do with an embossing and die cutting machine. Today I thought I'd share a tutorial for embossing aluminum foil. If you're looking for a tutorial to emboss paper with the Cuttlebug, click on this link: Cuttlebug Embossing Tutorial . I used Reynolds Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil , but since it works best when folded into several layers, you could probably use a thinner/cheaper foil if you have one on hand. In the photo above, I cut out a single layer of heavy duty foil and ran it through the machine. It has a nice deep emboss, however, if you rub your finger over the relief, it flattens out. To keep it from flattening out, you'll need to layer the foil. I was using one of the wide rolls of foil and I ripped a section off the roll that was about 16 inche...

Last week I showed you the basics of die cutting Cuttlebug brand shape dies in the Cuttlebug  machine. (If you want to learn the Basics of Embossing with the Cuttlebug, click the link.) It's super simple once you learn the order of the plates. A lot of the dies that you run into these days though are not as simple as those shape dies. So today we'll go through how to die cut with metal plate style dies. As seen in the top photo, the sandwich is the same for the plate dies as with the shape dies (from the bottom): A spacer plate, B plate, your die, paper, C plate . With these plate dies, though, you often won't get a crisp cut on the first trip through the machine. You'll need to run it back and forth in the machine a couple times to get the cut above, which did not completely cut through the middle of the tree. So after the first trip through, turn the die and put a piece of paper under the die as a shim to improve the cut. Run it through the machine...