All the cute canning jar projects, that are so popular right now, remind me of summers at my grandmother's house.
When I was growing up, every summer we would take a road trip to see my grandparents on their little 40 acre farm in Oklahoma. We would show up around canning time, so my mom could help my grandmother put up vegetables from the summer garden.
My grandparents had an old summer kitchen, and under that kitchen was a dirt cellar. The walls were lined with shelves and the shelves were filled with jars of vegetables and pickles and relishes and jams and jellies fruits and my absolute favorite: pickled peaches!
Canning was serious business at my grandmother's house and canning jars were well cared for. Although, it's popular to use old mason jars for iced tea now days, my grandmother's generation would never have risked damaging the top edge of a good canning jar through daily use. Every year, Grandma would send Grandpa down to the cellar to bring up boxes of empty jars. New boxes of seals were purchased, but jars and rings would be reused. My mother and grandmother would carefully examine the top edges of all the jars and set aside for other purposes any jars that might have gotten damaged in storage.
If they had only known about the CUTE things you can do with old canning jars! Most of my grandmother's less than perfect canning jars ended up in Grandpa's garage, storing nails and screws and nuts and bolts and leftover paint. I suppose you could say my Grandpa was ahead of his time -- he was "painting" jars long before it was popular! In honor of my late grandmother and grandfather, here are some of my favorite decorative painted Mason jar projects.
Your Home Based Mom managed to make the humble canning jar so elegant with gold paint!
At Real Coake you can find these adorable striped mason jar vases.
The Happy Housie painted this charming trio of coral colored vases!
At Mason Jar Crafts Love, you can find these adorable back to school themed mason jars.
Check out these silver painted Ball jars from It All Started With Paint.
Darling Darleen has a tutorial for drip painted Mason jars, inspired by these jars in an Anthropologie display!
Michaela Noelle created a tutorial for these sweet lace painted jars.
When I was growing up, every summer we would take a road trip to see my grandparents on their little 40 acre farm in Oklahoma. We would show up around canning time, so my mom could help my grandmother put up vegetables from the summer garden.
My grandparents had an old summer kitchen, and under that kitchen was a dirt cellar. The walls were lined with shelves and the shelves were filled with jars of vegetables and pickles and relishes and jams and jellies fruits and my absolute favorite: pickled peaches!
If they had only known about the CUTE things you can do with old canning jars! Most of my grandmother's less than perfect canning jars ended up in Grandpa's garage, storing nails and screws and nuts and bolts and leftover paint. I suppose you could say my Grandpa was ahead of his time -- he was "painting" jars long before it was popular! In honor of my late grandmother and grandfather, here are some of my favorite decorative painted Mason jar projects.
Your Home Based Mom managed to make the humble canning jar so elegant with gold paint!
At Real Coake you can find these adorable striped mason jar vases.
The Happy Housie painted this charming trio of coral colored vases!
At Mason Jar Crafts Love, you can find these adorable back to school themed mason jars.
Check out these silver painted Ball jars from It All Started With Paint.
Darling Darleen has a tutorial for drip painted Mason jars, inspired by these jars in an Anthropologie display!
Michaela Noelle created a tutorial for these sweet lace painted jars.
I hope you were inspired to look at your old jars differently -- you can recycle all sorts of jars for all sorts of uses, both decorative and practical!
