Hello, August and hello our sweet Blended Blog readers!
This is Leslie from over at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After with this edition of The Blended Blog's "Summer Series". I think this series has allowed our viewers...YOU...a glimpse at some of our favorite things about summer. Maybe even given you an opportunity to get to know a little more about us individually.
I am sharing a summer-flavored Do It Yourself project I came across recently on Pinterest. In my case, I call it a Did It Myself project because I am always amazed when 1. I actually do a project AND 2. the project I did actually turns out!
The project is called "How to Make Mason Jar Fairy Lights" and you can find it on my "DIYs, DIMs and Honey-dos" Pinterest board, here. But promise you won't go over there yet.
Actually, now that you have a link to the directions, I could probably bow out and leave you with it. But that wouldn't make this much of a blog post, would it? So, I instead I will share the pics I took as I made my fairy lights and then you can run over and see how the pros made theirs.
To make these fairy lights following my recipe you will need the following:
- Glow in the dark paints
- Mason or Ball jars, pickle or peanut butter jars, one for each light
- Long-handled paint brush with a rounded tip
- Tulle fabric
- Lace or ribbon
- Glitter
- Glue
- Scissors
- Round lid or plate approximately 8" in diameter to use as template for circles
To begin, I squirted a little bit of glow in the dark paint from one of the tubes onto a piece of aluminum foil or cardboard. I dipped the brush into the paint so that I had a generous amount on the brush and dabbed the paint first onto the inside bottom of my jar. I continued the process working from the bottom of the jar to up the sides and toward the top.
At first it really bugged me that my dabber didn't dab in perfectly round little spots of paint. Being kind of a perfectionist gets in the way of finishing (heck, starting) things at times. Good news, though, it doesn't matter if the dabs are round and even and perfect. Yay! In the first picture, you might be thinking that I am using the wrong end of the brush for my dabbing. And you would be right. The other end of this particular brush was squared and that really interfered with making round dabs. The wrong end worked right. Kinda. I combined two colors of paint on my jars.
When I made my lights, I was at a crafting event my friend Martha sponsors every summer called "Hobbies for the Cure". A bunch of us make a donation, get together and craft all day to raise money to help a local cancer patient with medical expenses. Martha caters lunch and the whole day is just so much fun. I had worked up quite the appetite dabbing so at this point broke for lunch.
Once fortified, I tackled step two. And this is where I kind of made this project my own. I decided to put tulle under the metal lids of the jars just to dress things up a bit more. That's what fairies wear, right? Tulle? Thought so. I used the lid from Martha's pitcher of lemonade to cut several colors of tulle in approximately 8" circles.
Those are stolen scissors from the library where I worked years ago. That grungy looking tape reads "library" because people kept taking my scissors. Turns out maybe it wasn't people who were taking my scissors. Maybe I just kept taking them home and forgetting them there. Anyway, these are so dull that I did the school a favor. And I could have chewed this tulle more evenly with my teeth.
Ta-da, tulle.
I held it on with a rubber band. Ta-da, rubber band.
Next step, glitter on that little metal center of the lid. One of my jars was a Ball or Mason so that little metal part is separate from the ring that screws around the mouth of the lid. Not sure why I thought you needed to know that. But just in case. The other was a one-piece spaghetti sauce jar lid, FYI. I painted white glue on the flat part of the lid, less glue is more, and then sprinkled on glitter.
Finally, I took a little lace ribbon and glued it to the edge of the lids. Actually, burlap and pearls on one, white eyelet on the other.
Before assembling everything, I set the jars out in the sunlight for several hours. That not only speeds up the drying but it also activates the glow in the dark qualities of the paint.
Now, NOW we are ready for assembly. I used about five or six layers of very roughly round tulle on each jar, fastened with the rubber band, then screwed on the lids and....
DRUM ROLL....
Voilà . Or as I sometime like to say viola.
And then comes the real moment of truth. Do these fairy lights light-up? Because if not, they are just dressed up jars.
I give you, fairy lights.
Whew, I was worried. So glad they worked.
The paint will continue to glow for awhile but can always be renewed with a few hours in direct sunshine.
My granddaughter Cady is having bad dreams. They started when my daughter and son-in-law separated. Cady starts out in her own bed but wakes up many nights, screaming. When that doesn't happen, Cady will slip into her mommy Brennyn's room in the middle of the night before the nightmares start. Brennyn and Cady are coming for a visit in less than two weeks and we are going to make some fairy lights together. I hope they will keep the nightmares away.
Now, run back up to the top of this post and check out the real fairy lights that the original fairy light maker made. And then, if you try your hand at this DIY, please share your results with us here on The Blended Blog.
Enjoy this last month of summer, friends.
Hugs and kisses,
Leslie
Leslie is a regular contributor for The Blended Blog. She is transitioning into retirement and adjusting to the empty nest that is now her home. To fill her days, she is engaging in a whole lot of retail therapy, substitute teaching, volunteering, crafting and reading then blogging about it all at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After. Leslie and her Prince Charming, Paul, live in El Paso, Texas with their two kitties Purrsimmony and Purrsnickitty.
