Much to the dismay of my darling husband, I have been collecting glass jars to hold candles since I used them to light the pathway of my 26th birthday BBQ. I recycled most of them when we moved but then started over again. I have even made purchase decisions based on the jar size/shape. Before you put me in the crazy pile, I should point out that I am generally not interested in cleaning gross jars so my collection is not much larger than 10 and, a you will soon see, most are tea light friendly. I love the simplicity of the glass jars for illuminating my balcony in the summer. So, when I saw this pin I knew I had to dress up my jar collection
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In the past, I have been overloaded with inspiration after one of Sherry and Katie's Pinterest Challenges. However, I never had a project to add. This time I have two which came together in the right time frame to participate. In this post, I will detail my new candle holders. The other project is the final reveal of my white and grey chairs which will get their own post. If you want to read the rules and check out the hosts and other participants head over to YHL for over 600 links and be prepared to get sucked into the creativity. You have been warned.
Full disclaimer, I have since unregistered myself from Pinterest after reading a couple of articles pertaining to the legal protection of its user agreement. Specifically, the company puts all the risk onto users for any potential copyright infringement. This recent Forbes article links back to a couple of others and explains the situation pretty well, comparing Pinterest to Napster. I don't want to rain on the Pinterest party but I just do not feel comfortable promoting a site I am no loner happy to use.
So, with the above inspiration photo in mind, I headed out to my local secondhand shop in search of a doily or two to spruce up my jars. In life, this was a spontaneous project that I did not intend to blog so I don't have before photos of jars (think small olive and sauce jars) or the doily I ended up buying (it was yellowed and stained but large enough and with distinctive patterns I could cut out.
This is a really simple project that can set the mood for a casual evening get together. It also seems to be a popular addition to an outdoor shabby chic styled wedding. Most importantly it is cheap and easy with a capital E. Here are my jars in action:
You will need:
Modge Podge (or any brand of decoupage glue)
paint brush (small but does not need to be fancy as you will ruin it with glue)
glass jars (save these as you use them)
lace
My total cost was 0.50 EUR cents for the doily! I had the glue and brush from prior use and jars are all recycled.
So, once you have gathered your supplies, set them out so you have a feel for the different sizes and can approximate what bits of the lace pattern you want to use on each one. I started by picking a non-stained section of lace and snipping it out. I found it was super easy to separate the patterns in my lace so that is what I did. You can see my inspiration photo used a more delicate lace and just wrapped it around the jar. If I had bought new lace by the yard, this would have been fine but since I used an antique doily that may have been created by hand, the pattern was larger and more defined and I wanted to really highlight its intricacies. So, I snipped, figured out placement and then brushed a thin layer of glue on the jar. I then stuck the lace on and applied a thicker layer of glue over it. Keep in mind that the glue will make the fabric thicker, feel free to use that to your advantage in designing the jars. In the jar below, you can see, I left a bit of the fabric standing over the top. This bit was fully covered in glue so it would stand on its own like that. For fire safety, I will only use a small tea light in that jar to be sure the flame is no where near the fabric.
My lace doily had three distinct patterns. The parts that looked like flowers, the parts that looked like paisley and then a cross hatch pattern in the middle. You can see a bit of an imperfection in the center of the large flower below. This was the biggest flower and fit perfectly on my largest jar so I decided I was fine with the imperfection. After all this was a recycled project and I was going for an antique look for my cake party anyway.
Here is the finished product acting as a centerpiece on my dining table. I think these little guys will get to stay indoors now. You may notice I mixed in a few non-lace covered candle holders, both types are from IKEA. While the tall candle stick is an orphan since its mate broke a couple of years ago and has since been discontinued, the small tea light holders can still be purchased and are the flip side of the holders used in the first photo with purple candles. They cost less than 1 EUR each and can be used for tapers or tea lights and I love this about them.
And that's it, low effort, high impact. Now that I used these jars, I will recommend only using tea lights inside them. I used small pillars (also from IKEA) in 3 of the bigger jars and by the end of the day noticed the rims were black. In the photo below, those flowers are in a vase but it looks like they are in the largest jar which may be a great alternative use for these.
Did you also make something for the latest Pinterest challenge? Add a link in the comments...I want to see.
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