Big Day DIY: Votive Holders

I’m sure that by now, you have seen these tinted Mason jars – they’re all over Pinterest. A co-worker has been unloading baby food jars on me (thanks, Carol!), and I thought these would be great for all the battery-operated votives I’ve been accumulating (thanks, Gramma!). I hope that these votives and these vases (I have 55 done right now!) will be enough for the tabletops . . .

Lately, it seems like I’ve been struggling in the craft department – nothing seems to go my way or how I want it. These tinted jars started out in failure and I was quite discouraged. I followed this tutorial, then this one – and both were messy. And drippy. And none too pretty. I do realize this failure was a result of me not doing something quite right . . . the pics from the tutorials look perfect. Here is the result of my first two test runs:

Because I am stubborn – and because I WANT MY WAY FOR ONCE, dang it – I tried one more time . . . Success!

Here is what I did:

1. Soaked and cleaned the jars (duh). Gerber must have some secret high-intensity adhesive recipe because these suckers are SO HARD to get clean.
2. I mixed the color mixture right in the jar. 1 rounded teaspoon of Gloss Mod Podge + 1 level teaspoon of water + 5 drops of food coloring. Mix well right in the bottom of the jar.
3. Twist and tilt the jar to coat up the sides, then dump the excess into the next jar. Let it drip into the next jar as long as you can stand it. This is a good project to do in front of the TV.
4. Wipe off any drips on the outside of the jar. Set the coated jar on a cookie sheet, right-side-up.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as many times as you’d like (I could get five or six jars coated with each mixture from step 2). When you’re on your last jar, just let the excess drip into the garbage can.
6. Set your jar-laden cookie sheet in a cold oven. Turn the oven on to warm (or, like, 200 degrees) and gently roast your jars for about an hour.

There! Hardly any mess, very little waste! These are time-consuming, though – it took me about four hours to do 50 jars. Glerg.

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