Thursday, December 23, 2010

Upcycled Baby Food Jar Candle Holders

Post 21 of 21 in the series, "Why I Haven't Blogged in Over Six Months." Yes folks, the series finale!

When my niece was still eating baby food from jars a few months ago, I started collecting and hoarding the empties. I just knew they could serve some sort of amazing crafting purpose. I had been wanting to try glass etching for a while and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. As if I needed to dabble in anything else...


I was amazed at how easy it is to work with glass etching cream. The hard/fun part is coming up with designs that will work. (I also found it difficult to photograph these so that you could see what is on them- any tips?) I made the pattern on the first one (seen below) by using skinny florist tape to mask off the design. On the second one I used some cheap, star shaped, scrapbooking stickers. For the others, I made my own stencils/stickers by punching shapes in Contact paper with decorative punches- the kind you use for scrapbooking and other paper crafts. Not all of the punches work well with the Contact paper but I managed to find a few that did.






Someday, when I have space in my home for yet another craft and all its necessary tools and toys, I would love to try filling these with my own soy or beeswax candles.

7 comments:

BeeCreative said...

Love Love Love!
We'll have to have another craft day & you'll have to give us a tutorial on how to do this!

Katie K said...

Thanks Kari! I would totally love to introduce you to the wonderful world of glass etching. It's way fun and with your amazing creativity, the possibilities will be endless.

Carolyn said...

These are the nicest upcycled baby food jars I've seen so far! My favorite is the snowflake one. It turned out very nice! I also didn't realize you could just etch the glass using etching cream. I thought I would need some fancy tool and meticulously carve each detail. I am seriously considering doing this! Thanks for sharing!

Katie K said...

Carolyn, I highly recommend that everyone remotely interested in this try it. Once you see how easy it is, you'll want to do it all the time. There is a small corner in the back of my mind that is pretty much constantly thinking about glass etching patterns. Let me know how your jars turn out!

Anonymous said...

A suggestion for the etching to show up more--maybe fill them with something and then photograph? Thanks for the great idea! :)

Anonymous said...

Ok I'm confused, how is this done? I have so many baby jars

Anonymous said...

Cut a strip of paper the same height as the inside of the jar and place it in the jar (like inserting a mini toilet paper tube)...a dark color might show the etching better. Or fill with colored sand/sugar. Again, bright colors would probably show the designs best. Good job though!