Moonlighting luminettes

Hands-on time: Less than 2 hours.
Total time: Add 6 hours of drying of time.
Skill: Easy.
Cost estimate: Cost of materials to do a dozen luminettes is less than $12.00.

Materials & Tools

• Small or medium size baby food, jam, or mason jars
• Glass cleaner and lint free cloth
• Paper towels
• WD 40 (to remove label's sticky adhesive)
• Painter's tape in assorted widths
• Pencil
• Scissors
• X-acto knife or craft knife
• Assorted self-adhesive stickers, circles, stars, flowers (available at office supply stores)
• Frosted glass paint (by Krylon), spray format (choose the paint recommended for exterior use - I used silver frost and blue with the silver frost)
• Cardboard box (about 10 inches in height)
• Ruler
• Coloured wire
• Clippers or pliers
• Exterior varnish spray (optional)
• Cotton swabs and WD 40
• Votive or tea candles

Looking for a fun way to recycle baby-food jars? Let the summer nights glow with easy-to-make glass jar luminettes using frosted glass paint. Patterns are created with paper stickers, painter's tape, and adorned with decorative wire to illuminate your patio, or deck.

Clean glass jars thoroughly to remove labels, and wipe dry. If the labels are hard to remove soak the jars in warm water and soap for about half an hour. For stubborn sticky residue on the jars, apply a little WD 40 and wipe off with a paper towel.

Use a variety of assorted self-adhesive stickers like circles, dots, stars and so on to create cool patterns by applying them to the clean glass jars. You can also cut narrow painter's tape in lengths to fit around the glass jar for stripes or draw your own designs on larger width tape, cut out with a craft knife and apply around the surface of the jars.

In a well-ventilated area (preferably outdoors) place the jars upside-down in a cardboard box and spray with frost glass paint, and let dry. I did some in silver frost, and some in blue, then once the blue ones were dried I applied silver frost over the blue ones to give them a silvery, frosted look.

Once the paint is dry, you can apply an exterior varnish if needed to make them better able to withstand the outdoors. Once the jars are completely dry, use the tip of a craft knife or pin to help peel off the stickers and painter's tape. If some bleeding occurred along the edges of some of the designs, it can be scraped off gently with a craft knife. To remove any adhesive left by the stickers, use a cotton swab and WD 40.

Cut decorative wire to desired lengths, and wrap it around the neck of each jar, making a loop at each side, then attach a handle also with loops. Or you can cut a longer piece of wire to connect all the jars together, to string them onto branches, trees, around the deck, patio, and porch or even on a fence. Place a votive or tea light candle at the bottom of the jars and enjoy silvery moonlit nights!

Tips

• This project works best with spray-on glass paints, because the jars are small; if you use regular frosted glass paints, you will get a messy result because the paint will tend to peel off when you remove the paper stickers.
• Applying a piece of double-faced tape or sticky-tack at the bottom of the candles will secure them into place and keep them centered in the jars.

Variations

• Use mason jars to make larger lanterns. For a super easy entertaining idea and centerpiece just lightly spray assorted sized jars with frost glass paint (omit all stickers), let dry and fill half the jars with sand or pebbles, add chunky coloured candles and simply illuminate.
• To write text such as words or monograms on the jars, cut letters out of wide painter's tape, apply to a clean jar and apply paint as per directions.
• Try a summer project version for children using a decoupage technique; have them cover assorted jars with coloured tissue or rice paper (hand-torn into various shapes and pieces) with Mod-podge and a paintbrush. Once dry, they can decorate them with assorted coloured wires and beads.