More Mason Jars

Here are a couple more ideas for using mason jars. HossFly took 3 of the jars, 2 quart ones, and 1 pint sized, and wired them all together to make me a hanging candle light in a tree out front. I don't know what size the wire was, but it was some I bought at WalMart, I bet you could use wire coat hangers,too. He used 4 pieces of wire down the sides and fit each jar between the wires. Then he used another piece of wire and wrapped it around the neck of each jar to hold it up, and another piece of wire under each jar. We put a little sand in the bottom, and a votive candle in each. I keep the lids out there to put on when I'm not using, to keep the rain out. These have been out there for a couple years now, they have a nice rusty look, but still strong.
And how about a great bird feeder? We bought one at a yard sale so we could copy it! This is a mason jar, with one of those screw on biddy(baby chicken) feeders. They sell them at feed stores(where we found them) at about $2.00-$2.50 each. You'll need an eye bolt, and rubber washers, and glass drill bit the size of your bolt,a mason jar, and a glass or ceramic dinner plate, an S-hook and some chain. HossFly wound up using hemastats he borrowed from a friend to get the hardware on. All in all it was pretty easy, the hardest part was coming up with the idea of using the hemastats to reach up in there! Birds love it, it stays pretty dry, and not hard to refill.

Pixie Jars and Fairy Jars

Last Christmas I made these as gifts for the Mama's of my grandchildren, and some for me, of course! I'd seen some on the internet somewhere, and I had everything I needed to make them. I found photos of the grandkids that I liked for this project, and re-sized them to 4x6 size. Then I found some free photobrushes of wings and chose ones for each child. You could find some wings and print them out and glue them to the back, draw them if you can..that would be even better! Next I cut out the images leaving a small piece near the bottom of the photo to help it stand up in a mason jar. I dug through my stash of crafty goodness and found some blue Easter grass, and some pearly filler for gift bags, and I even found a bag full of those battery operated flickering votive lights, all picked up at yard sales...I love yard sales...and since today is Saturday I'll be going after this post! I used glitter glue pens, perfect for this project, and dug some rhinestones and some beads and charms from my Bits&Pieces container, and glued the rhinestones on. After they dried overnight, I curled the photos around a rolling pin to give them a nice shape to stand up in the mason jar, and used both the Easter grass and the gift bag filler in the jar to fill it up almost to the top. The battery operated votives have a switch on the bottom, so I used some sticky velcro on the inside of the lid, and on the back of the votive to hold them in. This way I can pull the votive off to turn the switch on for the light to flicker inside the jar. I used different colors of ribbon and tied charms and beads to them, and wrapped and tied them around the neck of the mason jar. You can use any jar you like for this. I happened to have some old blue mason jars I made my own out of, and some older glass mayonnaise jars for my daughter and daughter in law. I painted the lids on those.