Pickle Jars and Tissue Paper

By Rachel Scarlett

Happy Thanksgiving! Coming at ya with another craft using the junk/garbage around you... Thanksgiving means fall colors and decoration. While I'm excited to eat turkey in a few days, I am really not a fan of fall colors OR decoration. I love the changing colors outside but would rather not bring a gourd, leaves, or leaf color theme inside my house (brown, red, and orange all together?... gross). BUT I was determined to squeeze in a fall craft before jumping on Christmas, and I barely made it. To do this I took the fall colors and put them in my own theme. All you need for this is pickle jars and tissue paper along with modpodge(or glue). I think they will be a good decoration, at least for this year. And I could even put them somewhere in the baby room when Thanksgiving is over.

The tissue paper is from the dollar store and saved from past gifting.

And of course pickle jars, or any jar for that matter.

I measured out the dimensions (circumference and height) of the jar. I added about 1/2 inch to each side for error. I cut these measurements out of white paper. When applying the paper to the jar, put a very light coat of modpodge on the whole jar and avoiding getting any on the jar threads. Approach the jar with the sheet, shown in the picture above, aligning the bottom with your work surface to keep it straight. As soon as the paper touches and sticks, smooth it out from that point with your hands all the way around the jar.

The top left shows the tissue paper completely on the jar. As you can see in the top middle, it smooths nicely right to the bottom of the jar. Before it was completely dry I careful cut away the excess right below the threads with an exacto knife.

It is probably apparent that I like Native American tribal print, AND I would just like to say I liked it before it was popular ;). I grew up around beautiful Pendleton blankets and cowboy paintings. That said, it's easy to see where I got my inspiration. Usually before a project I also Google Image designs and patterns to pull from. That's where I got the basic image above. I graphed it out to achieve straight edges and corners, then traced the outline on tissue paper

The four pictures above show the various extra shapes I cut out by folding and cutting multiple layers at once. I started with general geometric shapes before knowing the final design.

After cutting the shapes- oh wait, is this not a picture of tissue paper? Oops.... distraction!!! This is my daughter that was born last week, it's hard not to just hold and stare at her 24/7... Sigh...

Anyway... After cutting, I played with the shapes, and laid out some general patterns.

Apply the shapes by lightly sponging the area with glue or modpodge, it hardly takes any to make the paper stick. I followed the label grooves on the jar to make sure I kept the pattern straight.

And there ya have it! I tied twine at the tops to finish them off. If you keep the lids you can use them later to store candy, cotton balls, pencils... really anything. It would probably be smart to put another coat of modpodge over the whole jar for protection, and then a clear coat of spray paint if you really want them to last.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!