Sarah Jane's Craft Blog

I have to start off this post with some sad news, because it was that news that inspired this week's craft project. My 94 year old grandma passed away. In her later years, she took up drawing and painting and really enjoyed it, so I wanted to do a craft that used some of her artwork. This ended up being quite challenging. Our scanner that does a good job with documents and and an ok job with photos, did a terrible job with her colored pencil drawings. They came out completely washed out and overexposed. So I took some photos of the art, which turned out ok, so onward with the project. I used Word to shrink them down to 3/4 of an inch (the size of scrabble tiles) and printed them out onto some matte photo paper.  I cut the little pictures of art out and mod podged them onto the blank side of the Scrabble tiles. After they were dry, I used an old emery board to remove any excess paper or glue along the edges. Then I put a layer of Diamond Glaze onto the ti...

Every Christmas it seems that I end up receiving (or buying) nuts or cookies in one of those Christmas tins. I save the cute ones thinking I'll give someone cookies in them, but if I don't use them the next year, they often end up in basement oblivion. This cookie tin got dragged out of the basement and repurposed. I grabbed a cardboard box and a can of black gloss spray paint and went out onto the patio. I put several coats of paint on and let them dry 10 or 15 minutes between layers (sometimes less, as it was hot out and drying pretty quickly). The photo above was after 3 or 4 coats, and I probably put 3 or 4 more coats on after that. Multiple thin layers works best. When I was done, you could still see some raised areas from the design on the lid of the tin, so I decided to cover it with some scrapbook paper. I'm sure I bought this scrapbook paper on one of those 6 for a dollar sales that they have every now and again at Michael's. It seemed...

We were shopping at the local Wal-mart when I saw this adorable new " Happy Camper " duct tape with retro campers and pink flamingos on an aqua blue background. I knew I needed to have the duct tape, but I wasn't sure what I should do with it. Then I remembered the six-pack carrier we got from World Market when we picked our create-your-own six pack of sodas this spring. It folds flat just like the six pack carriers you get your favorite flavor of beer in ( which I've covered before with scrapbook pape r), but it's made from much thicker cardboard which made it ideal for covering and using as a picnic carrier. I grabbed a couple rolls of solid tape to go along with my Happy Camper print and got started. At first I just flattened my carrier and taped straight along the bottom. The bulk of the carrier was covered very quickly. When I got to the top of the carrier, I taped over the stair step openings. Then I simply cut slits with my scisso...

I had some Amazon gift cards saved up, and I knew just what to get with them: a Cuttlebug . A Cuttlebug is an embossing and die cutting machine. It looks like a little purse, but weighs about 10 pounds. When you set it on your table, you fold down the flaps on the front and back of the Cuttlebug to suction to your work surface. Then you can start embossing. The Cuttlebug comes with an A plate (which looks like a cutting board) that acts like a spacer and two B plates. The base Cuttlebug does not come with a C plate. A C plate is used for die cutting (especially with the thinner dies made by brands other than CriCut/Cuttlebug). I don't have any dies yet, so I started out learning the basics of embossing. The A spacer plate goes on the bottom, then you put one B plate on top. Then the embossing folder with a sheet of paper in the middle, then another B plate on top. They call these "sandwiches." You place all the plates on the Cuttlebug and gently insert ...

A while back I bought this tin filled with three Christmas cookie cutters (I'm sure on clearance). They weren't really a set that went together, so I took them out of the tin and threw them in with the rest of my holiday cookie cutters to save space. I was left with this cute little copper colored tin. I knew I wanted to decorate it--alcohol ink seemed like a perfect fit, but I wanted to try something different. But as we all know...the best laid plans.... So I stamped up the lid of my tin with some brighter lighter colors so that I could stamp something over the top. The process was pretty standard. I dripped several colors of alcohol ink onto my felt applicator and stamped across the lid until I got the coverage I wanted. I added a couple of colors to the felt after I filled in the lid to go back over the color and get more stippling and texture. Then it was ready for my experiment. I used a dye based ink and stamped over my pattern. When I pulled the st...

I keep seeing photos and posts online about what are essentially the same campfire dessert: campfire tarts, dough boys, woof'ems, campfire eclairs, etc... They are all made by roasting biscuit or crescent roll dough (I've also seen it done with bisquick) on a stick of some kind over the fire. Then you slide it off of the stick and fill it with whatever your heart desires. I had wanted to try them out for a while. I was going to make the sticks that were explained on this website . But I couldn't find the charger for my drill, so when we went camping, I just threw the dowel rod in the car and off we went. Before I stretched my biscuit over the end of the stick, I soaked it in some vegetable oil and and made sure to wipe it down with the oil before each new biscuit. The first biscuit I tried, was doughy in the center--too doughy to eat, so I scrapped it and tried again. I tried to stretch it thinner and handed it off to my husband, who is much more patient, to roa...

My dog needed some medication recently and our vet puts the pills in these lovely cobalt blue pill bottles. I had seen some great ideas for reusing pill bottles floating arounds, so I knew that decorating one of these pretty blue bottles would make a great organizer for my purse. I picked out some coordinating washi tape and wrapped it around the top and bottom edge of the bottle. This washi tape was 97 cents at my local Wal-mart in the craft section. It's very papery and not much comes on a roll, but it did the trick for this project. Now to figure out what to store in it: over the counter medication, coins, bobby pins or barrettes, q-tips, matches, emergency candy stash, ear buds, screws or nails (though probably not in my purse), sewing kit, mini first aid kit, the options are nearly endless. When I decide, I'll let you know.