SUPER Easy Craft!

So, what do you do when you have your whole day mapped out-starting with a late morning doctor appointment- and the doctor's office calls and says the doctor won't be coming in today? We still needed to do all of our other things...and most of them called for specific times (pick up watch repair BUT not until after 3 PM, pick up car  in for repair BUT not until after later in the day, etc.).

I knew I couldn't dive into any large projects but I didn't want to just wile away the day-although, now that I'm thinking about it, that might not have been too bad an idea. I was bathed, so definitely no outside in the heat and humidity work!! I was actually just sitting and perusing Pinterest and I saw an idea for a cute back-to-school Mason jar and decide to whip one up for Halloween instead and see how I liked it.

Truly the hardest part of this project was painting the jar without getting paint all over your hands...oh, and getting the darn clothespin off of the chalkboard-more on that in a minute.

A lot of the time when I make jar crafts, I use WalMart brand jars because they are plain and have no embossing. Certain applications just lend themselves to a flat surface:

...like this chalkboard-painted jack-o-lantern that I did last year for the little kids' teachers. It is much easier to do a face on a flat surface. But, for this application, I wanted the embossing so I could sand off just a bit and have the rustic Mason jar feel.

My next thought was a small chalkboard tied on with some black and white butcher's twine. Since this is such a popular product you can find it about anywhere right now. I found this package in the Target dollar section yesterday.

I had these small chalkboards on hand for a back-to-school project I am planning for the little kids. But, they had a clothespin glued on the back that I didn't want. I don't know what kind of glue they used, but I want some. I had to cut, hammer and wrestle in every kind of way to get that off of there so I could use it as a tag. And then just when I got it done, I realized that if I used the medium size Mason jars, this tag would pretty much cover up the part I was the most excited about-the Mason jar logo. And so, the jury is still out on this one. I may go out and buy some large jars and use the tag on them and leave the smaller jars "tagless"...we shall see.

Remember how I said the "hardest part of this craft was not getting paint on your hands"? Well, I was wrong. The HARDEST part is waiting for the paint to dry long enough for it to set so you can gently sand off the embossed lettering without all of the rest of the paint peeling off with it!

While I was waiting, I pulled off another no-brainer project. I usually do a back-to-school party/dinner with daughter #3 and her family every year. Usually the kids and I spend the day together and make all of the decorations and then we cook up something and Mom and Dad join us for a meal. Mason jars are always used to hold pencils, rulers, flowers, etc. This year I saw a cute pencil holder on Pinterest.

While I was sitting here waiting "for paint to dry", I thought I would paint a jar red. Then, I remembered that I picked up just such a jar on a huge Valentine close-out at HL this year. Off I went to my jelly cupboard that now houses pretty much just my Mason jar collection and lo and behold, it was actually where it should be.

 

A piece of twine, two leaves cut freehand from a scrap of green card  stock and voila, I have a nifty little vase for our next party.

And back I go to paint drying. Finally, dry enough to sand off the paint and drumroll please:

Maybe not the greatest project ever but definitely one worth keeping "just in case" I an once again called upon to do an instant gift for someone. This will be cute filled with flowers or even wrapped candy...and, not bad for a way to waste spend a bit of time...nothing quite like watching paint dry. Always exciting around here. Stay tuned.

P.S. And yes, I decided on tagless. I will find another place to use this.