Tag: book

Craft Projects

Mason Jar Candle Holders

Jessica Smith

My friend Amanda made the hubby and me homemade jam for our housewarming party last month. We’ve devoured two of the three jams, so two mini mason jars have been floating around our kitchen for a while. Brian thinks the same jar keeps ending up in our dishwasher (which is hopefully getting fixed today after being broken for a week and a half *groans*), but then he realized we have two of them. So then he wanted to throw both away *gasp*. Crazy  husband, we can craft those!

So, that’s what I set out to do. I still have a ton of pages left from the dictionary I tore apart, so I decided to Mod Podge paper onto each jar and make them into candle holders. I combined several ideas I’d seen on Pinterest (cutting our a heart in the paper, covering vases with twine, Mod Podging ribbon) to make a cute set of tea light holders.

First, I cut out a strip of paper to wrap around my jars. Once it was cut to size, I folded it in half and cut a big heart out of the center.

Then, I slathered some Mod Podge on the jar and carefully placed the strip of paper on top of it. It was a little tricky to get it to lay flat, but after smoothing it out and moving it around a bit, it worked out.

I covered the whole jar again with Mod Podge, even the cutout portion of the heart. I chose to do this so the glass would have an etched effect. Plus, I bought battery operated tea lights from the dollar story so I didn’t want them to be so obviously fake.

I let this dry for a while, but not completely, before moving on to my next step. For the next part of my project, I cut out teal ribbon to strip the candle holder. To secure it to the jar, I simply painted a thicker layer of Mod Podge onto the spot I wanted the ribbon to stick. I smoothed the ribbon stripes out and let that dry, too.

To finish this project (and cover a few imperfections) I wrapped the bottom of the jars in twine and tied an accent piece of twine around the top of the jar. To secure the twine to the jar, I powered up my hot glue gun and placed little dabs of glue here and there. I wrapped the top with one single strand of twine, and the bottom with several layers of twine.

To top it off, I made a twine bow for each jar.

With one last dab of hot glue for the bow, my candle holders were left to dry overnight. The next day I placed a tea light in each one to see how they looked.

I think they turned out pretty darn cute. I’m not sure what the hubby will think when he finally notices them (he’s not a big fan of twine), but I think this was a fun way to reuse Amanda’s jam jars!

 

Did I mention Remmy stole a candle during my photo shoot? Darn dog…

Happy Tuesday!

Craft Projects

Dictionary Box

Jessica Smith

Remember the goodies I got from the thrift store a few weeks ago?

I finally finished my project with the old Webster’s Dictionary and am so excited to share it with you.

I’ve seen things online about turning book into boxes. Some remove the guts of the book completely and some leave the pages for added effect. I decided to try this project out for myself using the dictionary I bought at the thrift store for like $2.

The first thing you want to do is decide what size, how big and how deep you want your box to be. Trace the shape on the first page of the book to mark where you will cut. Tip: Leave a thick enough edge so your box has sturdy walls.

Using an exacto knife/box cutter, start slicing along the lines. 

Keep going until you reach a good depth for your box. This part of the project took me hours. My dictionary had more than 1,000 and super thin paper, so it ripped easily. I had to do break it up and do the page removal over several nights because it was frustrating at times to remove the paper. In the end, I cut out about 1,200 page, leaving a few hundred at the back of the book. You can cut all the way to the back cover if you’d like. I stopped at a page with proofreading marks because I thought it would look cool as the bottom of the box.

Once all of your pages are removed, use mod podge to harden the frame of the box.

I did this part of the project at our kitchen table, so I put a cardboard box underneath so nothing got onto the table.

I started at the back of the book because I left some pages in. I mod podged each page at the back until I reached the section of cutout pages. From there I lathered the mod podge on pretty think around the edged of the book and this inside of the box.

Once it’s dry, your book box is complete!

Too cool, right?

I plan on trying this again, but instead of using the knife, I want to drill a hole in the middle and then jigsaw out the pages. Not 100 percent sure that will work, but if it does it would save so much time!