Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

Last week I shared that we got a new 3D printer . We've been having a blast trying new projects . This week, my husband wanted to try a lithophane. He found the instructions on this blog: ShapeWays Tutorial Tuesday: Lightning Fast Lithophanes with Cura . For those of you new to printing, Cura is a slicing program that takes the files you download from websites like Thingiverse and prepares them for your printer. The article recommended uploading a photo in Cura, then using a program called MeshLab to simplify the print and then slice it for your printer in Cura. So we chose a photo of our dog that had good contrast and used the settings and steps from the article. Then we let it print.  It was mostly an experiment, and it was really fun to watch it print. The finished print was about 4 inches square and turned out much better than we both hoped. The above photo is lit with a flashlight. It's really amazing the detail that was achieved once it's lit. It's a bit weird l...

The last time I sat down to do some crafting, it was a dismal gray day: cold, dark, foggy, and drizzling. Needless to say, the photos I was going to take for the blog would certainly suffer (especially since I still use a point and shoot).  So, I decided it was time to make a light diffuser.  I grabbed a box that looked to be about the size of a sheet of copy paper. Since one of the ends of the box stays open to take photos into, I taped the flaps of the box up to make the box a little larger (copy paper sized).  Then I cut rectangular openings in three of the vox sides leaving the bottom and back sides of the box solid. Then I started taping (with white duct tape) sheets of white copy paper inside the box to cover up the openings I just cut. I'm sure you could also glue the paper down, but since I had the white tape, it seemed like a faster choice. Then I cut a square piece of white cardstock for the back and the bottom (seen uncovered in the photo...

I first saw this quick project for creating a milk jug light diffuser on EPBOT (which is the creative blog of Cake Wrecks creator Jen Yates). Since I hope to be taking more photos of craft projects, I figured trying out a simple way to make the pictures a bit better would be a no brainer. All you need for this project is an empty milk jug. Clean it out and peel off the label. Cut the bottom and the spout off of the milk jug. That's it. Simply put the jug over whatever it is that you are photographing and take your photo through the opening at the top. The picture below was taken on an overcast day, indoors, with no flash or overhead lighting. Not too shabby. Then just crop the photo down to get rid of the unsightly milk jug. :) This key chain was in a Valentine's Day care package my sister sent me. I thought it would make a great test subject for the milk jug--and the bonus is that I get to show off her handy work. Well done sis!