DIY: Easy Mason Jar Luminaries Craft

Have you ever gone to the craft store with a project in mind and had the entire thing just absolutely flop in your face? All I wanted to do was make some neat mood lighting out of mason jars, and I gotta tell you things were rough! I already had pint and half-pint jars on hand, but I went ahead and got a totally smooth quart mason jar from the hobby store.

DIY: Easy Mason Jar Luminaries Craft

My first idea was to do the whole Epsom salt luminary but without glue. I boiled the salt and water down and applied it to my jars just knowing it would crystallize beautifully and, well, it didn’t. Russell came home and went *sigh* “why are all of those mason jars dirty?” Yep, they just looked dirty. It was so disappointing and a full day of effort down the drain.

So then I was going to attempt a new way to tint the jars in different colors (you might remember I tinted them with Mod Podge and food coloring a while back and it was a smashing success). Things were going great and I was so stoked and then out of nowhere, while finishing curing in the oven, the paint starts to blister and pop. Seriously?

I was just about sick of the whole project and since I have a tendency to walk off in the store found myself alone and unable to find my shopping accomplice. The only thing to do in this situation is to have the person paged with something like “Mr. B, your mistress is waiting at the customer service counter” OR go peruse the clearance aisle or another aisle that gets a large number of sighs and groans that keep you from it on a normal shopping trip.

And that is when I found these awesome little glass gems for 50 cents a bag. I snapped them up knowing that I was going to put these guys on my glass jars, fingers crossed that it would work out well. And guess what? In the end, I’ve got some gorgeous faceted jars that shimmer and shine or make pretty light patterns around them. It is wonderful!

Supplies for Mason Jar Luminaries

• glass gems
• hot glue gun
• mason jars
• tea light candles or battery operated tea light candles
• solar jar lids

How to Make Mason Jar Luminaries

Hot glue your gems to the glass…

Covering it as fully as possible.

Add your tea lights (battery operated or actual flame). You can leave the lid off, put it back on (if battery operated), or use just the lid without the seal if real flame.

My battery lights weren’t powerful enough to cast much of a glow, but the flickers underneath the glass were gorgeous. Great for interior lighting.

But you also have the option of making these mason jar solar light lids from the tutorial at Garden Therapy. This tutorial is seriously sooo easy – and each one costs you about $0.97 rather than the $12 it costs to purchase a mason jar solar lid!

These are great for outdoor lanterns and that’s how these will be used. The extra weight from the stones makes them heavy enough that I don’t worry too much about easily getting blown over by the wind and shattering. Oh, and the darker it is, the prettier both versions are but it’s totally impossible to get a good picture that way!

This may go down as the easiest DIY ever on Mom Sparks (though not the least time-consuming considering all of my personal craft fails)! Which do you prefer? The soft gold flicker or the bright blue stunner?

SEE MORE OF OUR MASON JAR CRAFTS!

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Allison

A crafter since her earliest years, Allison spends a little time every day making something. She crafts, sews, paints, glues things onto other things, and is a firm believer that a life spent creating is a life worth living. Visit Allison’s blog, Dream {a Little} BIGGER.