Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Gift Jar

Hello! Before I start with this tutorial I hope that you'll sign on to be a follower on the sidebar of this blog. I'm aiming for 200 followers by the end of August and time is ticking. I will give one follower a bunch of blog candy (some handmade items that you see here on my blog along with others I make) in a drawing on September 1st.

Now on to this cute gift idea. I'm sure you have all seen the gift jars that are layers of dry baking ingredients along with a recipe for brownies, cookies, soups, etc. Many years ago I found one in particular that I liked and gave these jars for Christmas gifts. I decorated mainly with non-scrapbooking items then but now I have so many products to play with that I decided to do some with my scraps.

The first thing you'll need is a 1 quart canning jar, you can buy them separately but I found 12 of them for $10.00 so they are a bargain in bulk. I've also seen them all the time at garage sales so keep your eyes open this summer. I like to use the wide mouth jars because they are so much easier to fill. For the recipe of this particular gift I'm going to direct you to the website where I found this one that I used to use. The brownies are yummy! Click here at allrecipes.com!

I used Perfect Day paper for this gift jar. It's so pretty and can be used for something summery or for Christmas, how many papers can you say that about? Cut the piece that will wrap around the whole jar 12 by 3 inches.

Use your circle cutter or a really large punch and cut another piece of pattern paper in a circle with a 2 1/2 inch diameter. Cut a piece of Colonial white paper 2 inches in diameter.

Print out the recipe that you get off from the All Recipes site onto Colonial white paper making it measure about 5 by 2 1/2 inches.

Trim it and add a mat that measures 2 3/4 by 5 1/2 inches. Cut the corner off from the top of the mat with a corner rounder.

Now punch out four circles measuring about 1 1/4 inch in diameter and punch four circles 1 1/2 inches out of Juniper cardstock.

Attach all the pieces together as shown. Distress with Juniper ink.

I used our brand new eyelet setter and soft eyelets (no more pounding) and easily added a white eyelet to the top of this tag.

I used the empty circle from the new set, Just For the Holidays (not available yet) and line it up so the circle is centered. Since you don't have this set yet, look through your stamps for a circular design.

I filled the center with another new set (wait til you see the September catalog), Grown With Love, using a sweet little heart.

This stamp set you will recognize, Gratitude, one of my favorites for random stamping. Stamp it in the center of the large circle for the top of the jar. You can spice it up with a sparkle or button in the middle if you like.

Glue it to the top of the jar making sure you put the glue or adhesive close to the edges of the paper so it won't come up on the edges.

Attach some white embroidery floss in a slipknot at the top of your tag.

Using some Tombow, wrap that paper around the center of the jar making the back edges touch evenly. Looks yummy already, doesn't it?

Add each of your heart embellishments to the four sides of the jar, try to center them. Use Glue Dots because Tombow doesn't hold them securely since the jar is rounded. Glue Dots, as you know, hold everything!

You need some juniper ribbon. Run a strip of Tombow adhesive along the ribbon first so it will stay well. Before tying the bow, take your tag and tie it to the ribbon, moving it to the side of the jar. Tie a pretty bow in front and trim ends.

Here's your completed jar, now who wouldn't want to receive this? A pretty jar with delicious brownies inside.


By the way, while making this jar I thought it would look so cute with the Lights, Camera, Action set if you filled the jar with popcorn kernels instead. If you do go with this idea you will need larger circles for the stamps in the set, possible 2 inches in diameter. You could fill it with black and orange peanut butter kisses and use the Spooky Smiles stamp set or skip the lid, fill the jar with brand new pencils and give it as a back to school gift. Imagine the possibilities of this!

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