Guest Project -- Make DIY Painted Mason Jars!!

Hey there! I’m Celeste: wife, mother of three {a 7 year old son and 3 year old identical twin daughters} and
a DIY addict.

I am so thrilled to be posting on Tatertots and Jello today! I just love Jen’s blog {it’s one of the first blogs I ever read} and all her fantastic ideas. She’s such an inspiration! After getting addicted to reading blogs, I decided to start my own blog to chronicle our adventures in updating our 1950’s ranch home we bought 2 years ago. We’ve redone the master bathroom, the kitchen {and built an island}, wood floors, board & batten, painted every room {some ~~twice~~ three times}, painted numerous pieces of furniture and tons of smaller projects. It’s all over on my ‘lil blog
My Greenbrae Cottage.

As much as I love the big projects, today I’m going to share an easy project with you…
painting mason jars!

{both with glass paint and chalkboard paint}

I love all the mason jars I’m seeing everywhere in catalogs and blogland. I especially adore the old vintage blue jars I’ve seen used for candles or flowers or anything for that matter. Instead of searching thrift stores {not my children’s favorite pastime……..yet} I decided to make my own. And it turned out to be super easy!

First I did a Freecycle post looking for free mason jars {do you freecycle? it’s like craigslist but all items are free} I ended up with several dozen! Most of them are just spaghetti sauce jars, but when spruced up, they can fool you into thinking they are from an old vintage kitchen.

I picked up this glass paint from Michael’s….Vitrea 160, in turquoise. I also grabbed some thinner from the Vitrea 160 collection.

I gathered my materials: clean mason jars, paint brush {which I decided later was not the best way to apply the paint}, bowls to mix paint.

First I thought I’d try diluting the paint with regular ‘ol paint thinner. Made sense to me at first…

but you’ll see on the right {above} the turquoise just beaded up when mixed with regular paint thinner. So then I mixed it with the Vitrea thinner and it worked much better {tray on the left}. I started with about a 50/50 solution of paint to thinner and later realized that I only need a TINY amount of the turquoise to achieve the faint blue color I was hoping for.

I started off by brushing the paint on. I used a large brush, hoping to have as few brush strokes as possible.

Both of the jars above were done with a paint brush. The first was a 50/50 ratio or paint to thinner. The second was about 30/70 paint to thinner. {Noticed I used the least attractive of my jars: labeled pumpkin soup, for my guinea pigs!}

Then I switched to a rag for the paint application:

I liked the rag MUCH better. I got a smoother finish and less of that brush stroke look. Also I thinned the paint much more by this point. I was using probably 20% paint and 80% thinner.

Above are the next two jars that were done with the rag instead of a brush and with a ratio of around 20/80 paint to thinner.

Here’s all 4 jars lined up for you to compare. The far left is 50/50 paint to thinner and brushed on. Next is 30/70 paint to thinner and also brushed on. The last two on the right are both 20/80 paint to thinner and applied with a rag.

You’ll notice you can still kinda see some strokes of paint {even with the rag} and also places where the paint is thicker than other places…but when you bake the color on and fill them with water and flowers, that all fades.

Once I had my technique mastered, I did a few more.

Ok, so next step is to bake the jars in the oven. This step locks the color in, makes them dishwasher safe and gets rid of that tacky/sticky feeling they have. First let them dry for 24 hours. Then bake the jars in a 325^o oven for 40 minutes.

And then I thought I’d accessorize them just a tad by adding some wire around the neck and as a handle. I bought this steel wire from Home Depot. It bends pretty easily, but the next thinner gauge would have worked well too.

I just wrapped it around the jar and cut. I crimped down the ends with my wire cutters.

Then I eye-balled how long I wanted the handle, added a bit more for twisting it on and cut.

And there you go! “Vintage” blue mason jars!

I just love how the color came out. So faint and refreshing…...just beach-y!

I want to share one other way I’ve painted mason jars and that’s with chalkboard paint. I just love chalkboard paint and am so excited when I discover another way to use it. I wanted to create a place to write my kids’ names on these jars. So I taped off an area with blue painter’s tape. I just eye-balled it.

Then I painted the small area with chalkboard paint.

I love this chalkboard paint from Rust-oleum! Did you know it comes in a rainbow of colors? But the ~~scariest~~ most exciting thing is that it also comes in a tint-able white! Oh, help me! I’d be at the paint counter for days trying to get just the right color. So for now I’m sticking with black!