Covid Be Gone!

With the virus once again sweeping through our county, I have been trying to stay much closer to home again these days. And, our weather has been a bit too chilly to enjoy yard work...so, that means, I need to find things to do inside without having to go out and get more supplies. And that pretty much rules out any new larger projects so, once again, I am looking for holiday ideas. I had several good ideas for St. Pat's Day but I couldn't find any of the appropriate image sizes and when I changed their size to what I needed, the print lost quality and just wouldn't work. And so, I ended up back at Valentine's Day. I pulled a large jar and set to work doing something I had kind of seen on Pinterest. I modified it a bit. Once again, it served its purpose in keeping me busy until it warmed up and I could head outside. It is definitely not a favorite but it will fill in a gap...if I only had a gap anywhere needing to be filled. Lol

I started by wiping it down with peroxide to get off any grease or dirt.

I wanted to put Xs and Os and, since I didn't have any fonts that I wanted for my Cricut, I had to cut the letters by hand. I did have some stamps that were just what I wanted so I stamped the letters on cardstock and cut them out to make a pattern and then traced them onto clear Contact paper. I had planned to use two of each (XOXO), but they turned out too big for the jar so I just used one of each. I should also say that this project works best on a flat "Mason" jar - not Mason at all. I find these at WalMart.

I cut out the letters, adhered them to the jar and burnished them down tightly. Since I already have a red Mason jar vase, I mixed red and a bit of white to get a dark pink color. Hmmmmm!?

If you look really closely, you might see that I painted right over the letters on the jar. As soon as I got this far, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like this color. To me, it isn't Valentine's Day. I guess I could have gone with a very light pink but I'm more about the red and white for the day so, after 2 coats of the other, I switched to red. And, for once, I was patient and let the paint dry really well.

On these pictures, the colors don't look all that different but they are. And, I guess because of my patience, the adhesive letters peeled off very easily and without pulling any other paint.

My inspiration jar on Pinterest outlined the letters but I was afraid of trying to make those straight lines on slippery glass so I ended up just taking a white paint pen and dotting around the outline. It's OK...not great! I also gave it a few light coats of a clear matte acrylic sealer.

It definitely still needed something so I made a little tag and then wrapped the lip of the jar with red and white twine.

Since I went out to the yard to do a few things, I decided to cut some of the things in bloom. We actually had more last week but have had a few chilly nights and some of the stuff isn't as vibrant any more. I think I am lucky nothing froze. I really didn't think about freezing temperatures because there wasn't a lot of talk about it but, we had two nights where it got down to 33 degrees. I don't think it was for long and most of my stuff is close to my house but still, I do usually wrap my sky vine and my bougainvillea when I know it is getting that cold. The sky vine did lose its flowers that were blooming but it will be fine. The bougainvillea wasn't bothered at all. It is in bloom now and beautiful!

In any case, the jar looks pretty filled with flowers so I am good.

So that's today's "adventure". Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings! Lol Stay safe and stay tuned.