diy: vintage inspired mason jars

We are super excited about today's DIY! It started out as a strictly "vintage blue mason jar" project but since we do tend to go a little overboard, we just had to experiment with other colors. If we hadn't run out of Mod Podge, we would certainly have had a rainbow collection of jewel toned jars by the end of the night. We are huge fans of the vintage blue color jars but they are pretty pricey and not so easy to find. This is cheap and very very easy and how awesome are they? Pretty awesome if you ask us. The marigold version kinda blew us away.

Supplies (2 Jars):
2 Empty Jars (we used the 16 oz. Ball Mason Jars)
1/4 cup Mod Podge
3/4 tsp water
Food Coloring
An Oven


Directions:
1. In a stain proof bowl (Pyrex works great), very gently mix 1/4 cup mod podge, 3/4 tsp water, and food coloring. You don't want any air bubbles. To get the blue color we used 8 drops of blue and 2 drops of green. To get the marigold we did 10 drops yellow and 1 red. You just have to play around to get the right shade you are looking for.

2. Slowly poor the entire bowl of mixture into the first jar like you would a beer (down the side of the jar). This helps prevent more air bubbles.Holding the jar over your mixing bowl, swirl the mixture around slowly as you turn the jar upside down until the inside is well coated, catching the extra Mod Podge mixture in the bowl.

3. Place jars upside down on a table protected by a thick brown paper bag or piece of cardboard. Allow to dry for about an hour. Lift the jars up periodically and move to a dry spot to drain excess mixture.

4. Place jars upside down in a cool oven (we started out with them straight up but quickly realized the glue was pooling at the bottom of the jars). Use a piece of foil on the rack below to catch any drippings that might happen. Turn your oven to the lowest setting. If you have a "warm" option, use that. Bake jars for about 45 minutes or until the jars turn evenly translucent.

5. Turn the oven off and allow them to cool in the oven for several hours. You do not want to transfer your jars from cold to hot (and vice versa) rapidly or else you risk breakage.

If you are like us, you are thinking, "These are too good to be true. There must be a catch." There is. You absolutely cannot get the inside of the jars wet or else they just turn right back into glue. Bummer...we know but they can still make beautiful lanterns. We plan on trying it out again but paint the outside of the jars instead. Seems a little harder but could potentially be amazing.

Enjoy!

xo tdm