A couple of years ago I had a epic fail of a DIY project that never made it on the blog. I tried to duplicate a project I had seen on Pinterest with decorating glass jars with paint pens. I didn’t create a template and tried to free-hand paint the two jars. Needless to say they were NOT all terrible but not anything I wanted to share either. I still used them though and for years they have sat on my kitchen counter. And then I bought a Cricut Joy™ and was inspired to recreate them the right way. I have now remade my DIY decorated candy and dog treats jars.
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DIY Decorated Candy and Dog Treat Jars are so easy to make with my new Cricut Joy™ machine.
So here is a photo of what the jars looked like after my first amateurish attempt several years ago. The lines in the drawings were wobbly and over time the paint has started to come off. Cute – but not really blog worthy to me. But still usable as candy and dog treat jars just the same.
To begin the remake of the decorations on these jars, I first had to clean them up and remove the old paint. This was so easy to do in about 30 seconds with a cotton pad and acetone (aka fingernail polish remover). A few quick swipes and the old chipped paint pen design was gone.
The jars I’m using are an old fashioned kind with the rubber gasket and hinged metal closure. You should be able to find similar jars on Amazon or large Mason jars will work also.
Since I am still learning how to use my Cricut Joy™ machine, that I talk about in this post, and the Cricut Design Space software, I just used images found in their exhaustive library of images instead of making my own. I will get to that point one day but for now I am loving all of the design choices already available for use.
For the candy jar I chose an image of a vintage “candy” spelling and circle design that reminded me of old fashioned candy stores. Then just for fun, I also cut out images of pieces of candy all in pink permanent vinyl.
One tool I have definitely learned to love with making vinyl images is transfer tape. I have been using the Cricut Joy™ rolls of transfer tape so far because they are cut to the same size as the Smart Vinyl. After having less than stellar results on my first couple of projects, I watched a Youtube video and saw the blogger using transfer tape to transfer her cut design to a coffee mug using the transfer tape.
That was definitely a “duh” kind of moment for me. I have applied wall vinyls before using transfer tape and it just didn’t click with me yet that I needed it for my Cricut projects as well. What can I say? I am learning some new things with this machine and my common sense is lagging behind.
Using a cut strip of the transfer tape, I transferred the wording and the candy images to the front of the glass jar.
For the dog treat jar, I found these adorable images of a pup with his head tilted to one side, and the word “treat” emphasized like someone was calling out the word. These were perfect because that is exactly what my dogs do when they even hear the word “treat”. They run to us with this adorable tilted head stance like “you are speaking my love language!”
I cut the dog treat images out of permanent navy vinyl and attached it the same way to the glass jar using transfer tape.
Some creative images and vinyl recreated these DIY decorated jars in very little time.
This quick and easy project is great during this time that we must shelter in place. There is so much more you can do during this time like finish up home projects, read a book you intended to finish, paint the bedroom that you already bought the paint for, or any other project you have had the best of intentions on finishing one day.
This was just one of the projects on my list I had intended to do for some time. My husband and I have also started some very neglected landscaping projects during this time.
Whatever you decide to do, stay home, stay safe, and stay healthy!
The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. Psalm 145:18
I don’t have a Cricut, but I do love to decorate jars like this! I just use a sharpie. How fun 🙂
Sharpies are so good for some many crafts. I have used those on jars too. But I am definitely enjoying my Cricut so far.