Glittered Light Jar for Easter

This is a super easy and fun DIY project that you can make for any holiday, season, or theme! I’ve made various jars for my home as well as gifts! My most recent jar is themed for Easter, a “He is RISEN” jar (see photo above and at end of directions). I will share with you the supplies you need to make your own light-up, glittered jar as well as simple steps on how to make it. Get creative, there are so many possibilities for this project!

SUPPLIES NEEDED:

Jar – make sure it is mostly smooth inside and out. Quart size works well. You can purchase jars at Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Dollar Tree, etc.

Polycrylic – I use the Minwax brand, clear gloss. You can purchase it at Lowes or Walmart.

Glitter – I prefer to use extra fine glitter for this type of project, but fine should work as well. It comes in many colors and there are different brands. One of mine is from Hobby Lobby and the other from Michaels, and they both work well!

Vinyl design – For my Easter jar, I created the design in Cricut Design Space and then cut it out using black 651 permanent vinyl. If you do not own a cutting machine, you can always purchase a vinyl design from the craft store or online (Etsy).

Light – There are several options for lighting your jar. I have two of them pictured above. One is a simple tea light. If you are going to use this option, you will want to purchase a tea light holder that you can use to have easy access to your tealight (turning it on and off). I have pictured options below as well as a link to purchase. The other option is a solar jar lid. I believe I purchased mine at Michaels but you can also purchase them on Amazon.

Helpful supplies: gloves, paper towels, waxed paper, craft sticks, little disposable cups, contact paper, and scraper to transfer vinyl design

How-to-make-your-jar:

First, you need to clean your jar well. Wash the inside and outside with warm soapy water, removing any residue, dust, etc. Let it dry completely.
Prepare the materials you will need to glitter the inside of your jar: Polycrylic, glitter, small cups, craft stick, waxed paper. See the photo below. For my jar, I needed yellow and green glitter, so I put a little green glitter in one of my small cups and yellow glitter in the other cup. I used a styrofoam cup to hold some polycrylic. Make sure to stir your polycrylic before use.
Once you start the process, you will need to keep working, you don’t want the polycrylic to dry too much to where the glitter won’t adhere. Pour the polycrylic into the bottom of your jar, then you will hold your jar sideways and start to slowly swirl the jar so that the polycrlic begins to cover the surface all the way around. Keep swirling so it moves up the jar until all of the inside of the jar is covered.

Hold the jar opening over the cup so the excess polycrylic can drip into the cup.
Next, you will add glitter. You want to make sure you put enough in there to cover the area you are trying to cover, but not too much at once if you plan to change colors along the way. I only put a little bit of green to cover the bottom area of my jar. You will roll the jar in your hands just as you did with the polycrylic so the glitter moves around and covers the inside surface of the jar. Once I finished with my green, I carefully poured in some yellow with the jar sideways and began to swirl it around to cover the remainder of the inside surface of the jar. Pour the excess out onto your work surface or back into the cup.

Now, your jar will need a good 24 hours to dry completely. It’s best to set it on top of something upside down, allowing some airflow underneath. See the photo above.
While your jar is drying, you can work on your creating your design. I created my design in Cricut Design Space. If you do not have a Cricut or other cutting machine, you might be able to purchase a vinyl design from a craft store or online (Etsy).

For my design, I did a Google image search to find 3 crosses I wanted to use. I found a free image and downloaded it to my computer. Then on CDS, I uploaded the file and saved it as a cut file (svg). Next, I sized it so that if would fit onto my jar. For the wording, I used the Edwardian Corn Medium font. After I spaced the letters to my liking, I curved the text slightly and sized it to fit above the crosses. Finally, I attached the image and wording, and cut the design on 651 vinyl. Here is a link to my design in CDS: https://design.cricut.com/#/design/137557190.
If you create your own design, you will need to use a weeding tool to weed out any negative vinyl pieces (such as center of small “e”). Then you will use contact paper or transfer vinyl to transfer your design to your jar (using your scraper).
Last step: add your light! You do not want to set a light down on the inside of your jar because it could scrape away some of your glitter over time, so its best to have a light that is attached to the lid in some way. You can use a solar lid or a lid that has a light you can turn on and off. Another option would be to purchase a tealight holder that goes down in down in your jar and hangs from the top.

In the photos above you can see my finished jar. If you wanted to, you could add other embellishments around the neck of the jar. I haven’t decided if I’ll add anything else. This is not the first glittered jar … below are a few photos of other jars I’ve made. As you can see, you can make them for any season or holiday or theme. They are fairly simple to make and great for gifts! I hope you enjoyed this blog post and will check out other crafting and Cricut projects I’ve shared on my site. If you make a jar, make sure to stop by My Pinterest page and share a photo with me! Until next time, keep on craftin’! ~Kristina~