Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Ages ago, I cut a couple of designs about dogs being welcome and people being tolerated. The design I used for this week's sign was too big for the Dollar Tree metal sign blank that I had set aside for it (I must have measured wrong), but my backup design fit, so I made that sign and gifted it to my sister. Well, skip ahead several months later and I finally made it to Michael's and picked up a sign blank that would fit the design and complement the color of the vinyl (I even had a coupon). As you can see, I cut the vinyl out with a bunch of Christmas designs, so it had been a while. I used black permanent vinyl and cut apart each design after it made it out of the Silhouette Cameo . That cut design sat around in my craft cart for months before I finally found a sign. I used my weeding tool to remove the extra vinyl. After the design was weeded, I cut a square of transfer tape to match and prepared my sign surface. The sign was oriented in the wrong direction for my sign, so...

Well, it's official. The window for creating holiday crafts has opened. To start off with, I decided to drag out my old Silhouette Cameo 2 and cut some designs. I decided to ease into it, though, by sneaking in a dog lovers sign, too. If you follow the blog, you may remember that the last time I used my Silhouette, I swore I wouldn't use it again to cut vinyl until I got a new blade. Well, I got a new blade , so here we are ready to swear while weeding yet again. I printed a mix of designs and tried to cram as much in as possible. I have some Thanksgiving/fall projects in the works while squeezing in some Christmas designs. The "All I want for Christmas" design that I'll be using on a sign for today's project was a freebie from the Silhouette Studio from a previous year that I hadn't cut yet. I had meant to use the bottom "Dogs Welcome" design, but even though I measured the sign, the design was way too big once I cut it out. I'm not sure w...

My very first craft blog post was about making braided fleece dog toys.  In the year and a half since that post, I've learned a lot about how to take better photos with my little point and shoot camera, and how to adjust the photos that aren't so great on my computer. Lets just say that me and the macro setting are best buddies now.  I still have a lot to learn, but I can easily see how much the posts have improved. Needless to say, I recently happened across some fleece in the remnant basket at the local Walmart (our closest Walmart still has a fabric section--I know many don't anymore). About 20 inches of a bright blue fleece and 15 inches of a thicker light green fleece were each marked at about $1.00.  Those widths of fabric aren't good for much, but they are perfect for making rope bones.  So I figured it was about time to make some more.   I pulled out my cutting mat and rotary cutter.  For medium sized bones, cut your strips 2 inc...

I love my dog, and I'm always on the lookout for crafty projects I can do for my dog. It nicely combines two of my favorite things. So I thought I'd make my pup some rope bones out of some leftover fleece. So I dug out my handy cutting mat and ruler and sliced up some folded fleece. You don't need to get the fabric super straight--this project is very forgiving. Using the rotary cutter was by far the fastest way to do this project, but it would work just fine with a scissors. You'll need: Fleece (a scrap that's about 24" by 6" will make one rope bone) something to cut the fleece with (scissors or rotary cutter) and something to anchor your rope (like a binder clip or a safety pin) I cut some of the fleece 1 1/2 inches thick for my sister's dog (who's about 10 pounds) and some 2 inches thick for my dog and my parent's dog (who are between 15 and 30 lbs). You can cut the fleece even thicker for la...