Yesterday, I shared the garden markers I made from mason jar lids. Today, I want to share the solar lanterns that made up the other half of my dad’s garden themed birthday gift.
There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to make these puppies, and since I didn’t photograph the whole process, I’m not going to give a full on tutorial. But, here’s the basics…
I started by finding garden solar lights. I had to shop around, because I remembered seeing some at The Dollar Tree, but when I went to The Dollar Tree to buy some, they were all sold out. I asked the clerk if she could check some other stores and save me the trip, and she begrudgingly obliged. Turns out, the previous weekend, the solar lights I was after had been the featured item in the Sunday ad, and all the stores were sold out. I ended up finding them at Big Lot’s for about $2 each. Not too bad. The ones I found were like these, but obviously much cheaper.
Once I had the lights, I twisted of the top, and went shopping for mason jars. I wanted to find jars that were small enough to really show all the light, but still had a big enough mouth for the light fixture to rest on. I ended up getting wide mouth pint sized jars.
I removed the inner lid and only kept the rim. I glued the top of the light to the screw on rim using my ultra awesome powerful glue, E-6000. While these were drying, I got to coloring the insides of the jars.
To color the jars, I poured some high-gloss modge podge into a bowl. Now the insides of these jars shouldn’t be exposed to the elements in theory, but I wanted to use the weather resistant solution any way. I mixed several drops of food coloring into the modge podge until it reached my desired color, then poured it into one of the jars. I rolled the jar around until the entire insides were full coated, then I poured out any remaining mixture.
I repeated this step until all the jars were coated and then I moved them to the oven warmed up to about 350. I imagine they could have just as easily dried at their own pace, but the oven allowed them to dry in a flash. As the jars dried, the color went from a creamy opaque to a crystal clear.
When the jars and the lids were all dried, I screwed on the tops and wrapped around some wire to make a handle. I used needle nosed pliers to twist the ends of the wire into cute little swirls.
And, they were ready to go.
