DIY Tutorial: Tea Light Jam Jars

Today’s DIY Tutorial comes from one of our very own Boho Brides. Becki who you all met a few  weeks ago is having a very DIY wedding she has been busy getting her big day planned and getting her craft on. As well as this Becky has started her own stationery business Love Knot Creations.

Today Becki is going to be showing us how to make tea Light Holders out of Jam Jars, but decorated in a very pretty way.

I’ll pass the Blog over to Becki…………….

Step 1 ) Spend months collecting jam jars from friends and family. Seriously, you’ll be surprised just how many you get given! People turned up with bags full and I was like my gosh what do you eat??
Remove the labels and use sticky remover to get off the remaining glue from the jars.
Wash them thoroughly.

Step 2) Next you will need to paint a strip around the top and bottom of your jars and inside the very top also. You can do this freehand or with masking tape to get a definitive line, but I just did it freehand. It’s important to just paint a couple of mm after the bulgy bit of your jar so that you have as much of the middle free from paint as this is where the light from the tea-light will shine through.
Repeat until you are happy that you have a solid finish.

Step 3) Pull out the pages from your chosen book. The pages need to be the slightly rough recycled kind, not shiny as it won’t work with those. Trim the top of the page down to the first line of the writing and then measure where to cut the bottom of the page just by holding it up to the jar and judging it. Ideally it needs to sit just nicely in the gap overlapping the paint slightly.
You need to keep the side edges on though for overlapping around the jar.

Step 4) Mix 1 part glue to 3 parts water. It needs to be a bit runny, not gloopy and I prefer to use the Hi Tack kind of glue rather than just the normal PVA glue type as it seals the page to the jar much better so when it dries it’s flat with no air pockets.

Step 5) Take your cut piece of page and lay on a thicker piece of cardboard or mat and brush the glue over it making sure you cover all the edges. Immediately place it on your jar. The paper needs to be wet enough to be pliable but not soaking as if you get it too wet it will run all over your painted part of your jar and remove some of the paint.
The next piece of page you put on you will need to cut one of the edges off so that the lines of writing overlaps.

Repeat with more pages until your jar is covered. You can either coat your jar with mod podge or leave it as it is.

Step 6) Finish your jars with a tea-light in each one and either ribbon around the top or you could stamp an image onto the front or put beads around it.. the possibilities are endless!

Thanks so much Becki. What do you think? Simple yes?

Becki will be back in a few weeks time with more DIY ideas from her wedding

♥   You can find more DIY Tutorials HERE  ♥