When my cousin asked me to do decorations for her wedding, my son was 6 months old. When I started him on solid foods I was determined to make all his baby food myself, but…. that tapered off pretty quickly. Her outdoor wedding gave me a chance to relieve my conscience by giving me way to use up all those empty baby food jars!
To make baby food jar lanterns, you will need:
empty, clean baby food jars
ribbon
small silk flowers
other embellishments
glue gun
floral wire
tea lights
I cleaned out about a million baby food jars and scraped the labels and the label goo off of them. If there is a “use by” date stamped on the jar, take a little nail polish remover on a cotton ball and wipe it right off.
Although the wedding bouquets were a shade of red, I wanted to keep the other decorations more neutral. I bought and pulled apart one or two really cheap silk floral stems from Wal-Mart. I hot glued them and some cheap ribbon to the jars. I experimented with a few different designs but settled on 3 that I like the best.
After I finished decorating the jars, I wrapped floral wire (leftover from making the bouquets) around the lip of the jar so that the jars could be hung. Finally I plopped a tea light inside. (The Dollar Tree sells flameless tea lights if your reception venue doesn’t allow open flames.)
The original idea was to hang them from the trees in my parents’ yard. Well, the lowest branches on those trees are a good 20 ft off of the ground. Instead we used the stems I cut off the wedding bouquets I made as stakes and lined the flower beds with the lanterns. Since the jars were “repurposed,” the only cost of the project was the 1 spool of inexpensive ribbon, 2 sprigs of silk flowers, and a half a package of tea lights.
These are so cute! Totally inventive!
So creative! How lucky she was to have you helping!
would you be willing to share how you wrapped the wire on the candle holder to hang it? pretty please 🙂
Tanya, I don't actually remember exactly how I wrapped the jars since it has been a few years now. :p This tutorial from Crafty Nest shows an easy and effective way to do it though. Hope it helps: http://www.craftynest.com/2008/10/hanging-jar-lan…