There's a good chance that I am clinically addicted to Pinterest. The website is crafter's crack, and even when I don't see something on my front page to try out, I can always easily look up a tutorial for some idea that's been lurking in the back of my head.
I tend to fall prey to the professional photos. I probably belong on Pinterest Fails for the sheer number of times I actually destroy pieces of my furniture in the process of sucking at recreating pins. On that vein, we dive into today's project.
Mason jars, for some reason, are the next big thing. They have flooded DIY threads. Everyone and their uncle has a use or an upcycle for a mason jar. I actually found it a little irritating for a bit because most of them just seemed so... empty to me (badum-chhhh. Sorry, I should be shot.) But really. Most of them just seemed like dust collectors.
That is, until I saw this:
I'm generally kind of whatever about all these chalkboard projects. However, this reminded me of something else I used to make as a kid - luminaries. With a defined enough pattern and an opaque enough layer on the jar, I figured I could make a pretty neat shelf ornament, and at night, a cute patter would shine across the wall.
So, without giving it much thought I sort of just... went to town.
This turned out to be a bad call.
I showed you the other day a painted mason jar. Before I got to that point though, I decided I was going to try a sort of celestial design with a moon and stars. One of the pin tutorials I found showed someone cutting a stencil out of painters' tape, and I figured I'd do similar:
Looks ok, right? Well, the problem is, I free-handed the design completely, so it was pretty lopsided, and the lines weren't super clean. I tried to go ahead and paint it, but it just kept getting messier:
Pro-tip: If you ever plan to paint something where you intend to remove a layer and get clean lines, don't ever use fabric paint in the mix - it get's a bit rubbery, and everything just strips away, leaving you with a mess.
Fortunately, I bought 3 jars, so on to the next one.
Unfortunately, I am a dope and forgot to take process pics. Ultimately, this is what I came up with:
Unlike the first one, I used stickers for smaller elements and made an effort to make the main element more symmetrical. I'm actually a little undecided about the small music note decorations. See, they come from a sticker set like this:
They have a nice rounded surface, which when painted over, looks like this:
Not quite what I was going for, but the raised impression actually looks really nice - possible nicer than what it would be if I removed the sticker altogether. Still not sure what I want to do, but I think I'll leave it for now.
It looks pretty nice here as a vase, but unfortunately, that's not its intended purpose. As it turns out, I did not prime the jar well enough or add enough paint layers, because this it what it looks like in the dark with an LED tea light:
Yeah, not terribly useful.
Ah, well. It's possible I'll go back and paint over it to get the intended effect, but I'll likely let it be. Hopefully it'll still make a nice addition to a little girl's room or sommat.
Why would I be making things for a little girl's room?
...Because of reasons.
Until the next.
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