I'm not sorry though.
Nifty shares shorter, individual videos on Facebook, and if you search there it'll come right up, but for some reason they stuck multiple related videos together on their YouTube channel. For more views? I mean, I guess. It's long though. Too long. And the multi-level fairy garden village thing that you can make with broken terra cotta pots is really fucking stupid. Sounds cute at first, but then they're like, "Okay, first put in some dirt. Now buy a complete, pre-made Hobbit and/or fairy house that's perfectly to scale."
What is nifty about that? Ugh.
Anyway, the little lantern jars are cute, with the exception of the tape stuck across them (to make them look more like actual, old-fashioned, metal cage-type lanterns).
Nobody's got time or money for wire handles, wooden bases, or spray paint, either, so like, just skip those, 'kay?
The jars I saved once contained pickles, strawberry jam, and a sweet pumpkin coconut spread. This was a particularly easy craft to make here because, for whatever reason, loads of things come in glass jars of all sizes in Germany.
Wash them and get frustrated getting every last bit of the adhesive off the outside once you've soaked and peeled away the labels. I washed all of mine and their lids twice.
Use white acrylic paint and pretty much anything - a makeup sponge, bunched-up tissue, or paper towel works fine, no all-natural sea sponge required - to pat and dab the insides of the jars.
Buzzfeed Nifty says to do two coats. Even my husband, who is the opposite of crafty and doesn't understand painting at all, could see that this would be too thick and opaque, and that you wouldn't be able to see even faint silhouettes though the completely white jars if a second coat were applied.
Copilot: 1. :D
Nifty: -1. >:(
Paint the lids once your fingers and the insides of the jars are coated in a thin but even layer of white. I'd have done mine gold if I'd had it, but I planned on decorating them with other bits and pieces anyway, so white was fine with me.
I used some of the same bits to decorate a digital photo frame
we didn't end up using for the party. -shrug-
Mostly I dug up bits and bobs to make these, per usual, but I did buy that
bag of moss, the roll of twine, and the star stickers. I spent like 5 euro.
Why not use old and/or broken and/or thrifted Christmas ornaments for the lids? Things that look like sugar-coated candies, mushrooms, fake pine branches, real pinecones? My pinecones, dried orange slices, and star anise are recycled from the lovely Christmas centerpiece Andrea made us as a housewarming gift. I'd planned on keeping it until I realised that she used real pine branches, and that we were definitely going to burn the advent candles all the way down. But it lives on!
How about little dolls or figurines? Little plastic or wooden trees, houses, deer, sweets, or the most obvious choice, fairies? These could be for Christmas, Easter, a garden party, birthday, Halloween, anything!
Honestly, this was already taking longer than I'd expected it to, and I ended up spending pretty much an entire Sunday on just these jars. So instead of drawing my own floral or woodland decorations, I went through all the paper scraps and pages that I stash away and used those.
Cutting things out with an X-Acto knife takes ages and it's really not my thing, so I didn't want to spend even more time drawing designs, too. Seeing the fairies through was not easy for me, The One Who Cannot Focus. If you have a printer at home, for god's sake, just use that.
This random page from a Chinese literature book I used in college (that hadn't had front of back covers since then and literally fell apart in my hands) was one of the many I found when I cleaned out our storage unit: I decided to use this calligraphy to decorate
a couple of the lids.
Didn't originally intend to do something colourful, but here we are
using whatever we've got on hand, huh?
I did larger fairies so that they'd be easier to see. Buzzfeed's idea is cute
but kind of impractical unless you have massive jars or are putting them
on something elevated to eye-level.
The mind is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised
Okay, well, here are my damn fairies!
I painted them black so they'd be easier to see:
Side note, it looks cool if you paint them, as you can see. Maybe do something with that.
Do it on another piece of paper or a canvas or something for another project or decoration.
Ahhh, finally!
Summery!
Whimsical!
Dreamy!
Stars and moss!
The final piece of this craft, the battery-powered flickering tea lights, was provided
by my mom. She miraculously had some in a drawer at home. Yay!
... and after all that, the photographer didn't take any photos of these at the actual reception once it had gotten dark lol so here you go!
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