As you’ve seen, this week my mom and I decided to make some mason jar crafts. At the start of the week, I had plans to continue creating Alice in Wonderland/Nightmare Before Christmas items for my bedroom. I left to go to the store and buy some mason jars yesterday fully intending to continue that plan but what I created was something completely different.
This week, I made Canada-inspired Mason Jar Candle holders (… I may need to think on the name because that’s quite a mouthful).
Before getting where I intended to buy the mason jars, I stopped at our local Value Village and found two larger mason jars. They were too big for what I had planned but I knew I had to have them… it was time to shift gears….
My hubby likes to sit out on the balcony in the evenings and smoke a cigar. We don’t currently have any lights on the balcony so he’s usually stuck sitting in the dark with the small lighting that comes from inside the apartment or from the streetlights. I thought it would be nice to make him a candle holder he can take outside when he smokes his cigars.
With Canada Day fast approaching, and having already looked at some Canada Day craft ideas, I thought that a Canada-inspired mason jar craft would be a great idea.
They turned out okay…….
They looked great without lights in them but when he took it outside last night, the side of the jar looked quite streaky. It also didn’t give off as much light as I’d hoped. With that said, I am happy with how they turned out. I wouldn’t consider it a complete failure and I’m eager to find a way to improve my mason jar painting/crafting.
For now, I’ll share what I did, as it still makes a great indoor candle holder.
Materials
· Mason Jars
· Paint (the picture shows a paint from the dollar store. I switched to a different paint after the first coat because it wasn’t covering well)
· Paper/pencil/marker/tape (I tried to find a leaf stencil with no luck. When that failed, I drew my own maple leaf)
· Sand/rocks for filling
· Rope or ribbon
· Glue gun/glue stick
· Candle (I used a flameless candle)
Step 1: Create/attach your maple leaf stencil. Draw the shape onto the jar so that you know which section to avoid filling in. I used tape to hold mine on from the inside and used a red permanent marker to draw it on the outside of the jar.
Step 2: Paint the jar. I probably painted about 4-5 coats with a larger brush and did some touchups/ filled in finer details with a smaller brush on the last two coats. Once I was done, the flat red looked too plain so I decided to add some white dots.
Step 3: Add your filling (sand, rocks, etc.) into the jar. I found gold “sand” at the dollar store, which was the perfect filling – the gold colouring fit exactly the image I had in my mind and the quantity filled exactly to the height I wanted. It was a great find!
Step 4: Use glue gun/glue to attach rope or ribbon to the top of the container.
Step 5: Place candles in jar.
Even though it didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped, my hubby loves it and that’s all that matters!
Kim
