DIY Halloween Luminaries
Aren't these DIY Halloween luminaries great? Well, they are made using recycled jars, cheap, and easy, too! Before Halloween, I plan to make enough of these to line the serpentine sidewalk to our front door but they would look neat inside the house, too! Tealight candles can be used inside the jars, but I use the battery operated tealight candles, which I found at the dollar store.
If you remember, I made some of these luminaries with a patriotic theme, earlier this year. I have been saving emptied jelly and condiment jars for this purpose. At the end of the Halloween season each year, I buy some marked down Halloween napkins. These are made with those napkins!
The only supplies you need for this are napkins, empty glass jars, scissors, Mod Podge, and a paintbrush. If you wish to make a bow around the top of the jar like I did, you will also need some twine or jute string. I like the added touch of the bow.
The instructions are simple. Choose a clean glass jar and the napkin you would like to use for the project. Napkins usually have layers of thin paper. Peel off the layer with the graphic printed on it. Throw away the other layers unless you can think of something else to do with them!
Decide how you want the napkin to fit on the jar. A quarter of the napkin with the skeleton fit nicely on the large jar. After painting on the Mod Podge and adhering that section to the jar, I cut around the skeleton arm and hand bones of another, so when those elements overlapped the skeleton already on the jar, it would not completely cover it. You can see where I cut, indicated by the arrows, in the picture below. The broken arrow on the right indicates where the backgrounds overlapped.
You can redesign the images and lettering by cutting out elements, flipping, or repositioning, and gluing with the Mod Podge. The design on this napkin was extended onto the rim by cutting out the black border, turning it sideways and adhering to the rim of the jar. I like the rims covered, too.
The salsa jar used above needed a little bit of a different technique. The top layer of the napkin was Mod Podged to the lower portion of the jar first. Then slits were made in the middle section to fit the contour of the jar. Turning the jar upside down, the brush with Mod Podge was slipped under the napkin, Mod Podge brushed on the jar, and the cut sections were gently brushed onto the jar from the topside of the napkin.
I love the way they look, especially when they are illuminated in the dark. It's a great way to recycle old jars and the design ideas are limitless! I can't wait to see them en masse along the walk! Maybe this will give you the inspiration to make some of these DIY Halloween luminaries, too.
