Halloween Baby Jars

Am I the only one who cannot bear to get rid of baby food jars? I literally have a cloth tote bag full of clean empty jars just waiting to be used! My husband has been bugging me to get rid of them, but there must be an adorable way to re-use them... right? 

I'm proud to announce that I have found a way! I saw on Pinterest awhile back some baby food jars that were spray painted yellow to resemble lego characters (which I will be doing for the Conductors first birthday coming up in November, but that's a different post for another time!) and mentioned the idea to Catti. She suggested painting the inside of the jar to keep the outside nice and smooth and a little more durable. Catti also had some orange paint on hand and we thought how cute it would be to make pumpkins! I took the idea and ran!

Here is my Halloween Baby Jars tutorial:

First off, you need your supplies:

• Obviously some clean, dry baby food jars. I soak the jars in water for a couple minutes to get the label to peel off easily. 
• You'll need paint. Catti had some washable paint which did an okay job, but I had much better results with the Joanns store brand acrylic craft paint, but really most any paint will do the trick!
• A permanent marker for details.
• Paper towels for any clean up and spills
• A paper plate. I used the plate for when I would tap the jars in case paint came out during the process.

Make sure to shake the paint if needed! I poured about a tablespoon of paint into the jar and slowly swirled it around to cover the bottom evenly.

Then, I tilted the jar horizontally and slowly turned the jar (think like a cement mixer) making sure the glass was getting covered evenly. The first two I was tapping insistently on the kitchen table and it took me about 15 minutes to get each jar covered. On the third jar, I tapped it again the palm of my hand and it went much quicker when I rolled the paint along.

There. Now we've got three orange colored jars ready to be jack-o-lantered. I drew a couple test faces on a piece of paper to figure out which ones I liked the most and then proceeded to draw them on with the permanent marker.

Of course after finishing the pumpkins I started thinking of Frankenstein and Ghosts! Maybe even a Witch or Dracula! Same process, just different colored paints and new faces!

 

Then make sure you husband comes in and makes himself at home on your work table. He brought me a mug of pumpkin spice though, so I guess I can't really complain.

Ta-daa! I let the jars dry overnight (much to the dismay of the Engineer who had a hard time keeping his hands off of the jars - he wants to incorporate them into his train scenes) and worked on the lids the next morning.

To paint the lids, I screwed them onto the jars, poured some paint on the top of the lid (1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of paint) and dabbed it with a foam brush. The application was not smooth and was bubbly, but I let it dry and proceeded to do another 3 coats and they turned out better than I thought they would!

Enjoy! We can't wait to see what ideas you come up with for your left-over baby food jars!

P.S. I just couldn't resist...