I pinned a number of tutorials for tinting mason jars, and I ended up kind of combining all the techniques I saw, as well as trying a few of my own ideas. As I experimented, some jars turned out better than others. I'm sharing the method that worked the best for me.
You need:
Matte Modge Podge
Food coloring
Tin foil
a styrofoam bowl
an inch wide foam brush
a popsicle stick or something like it
a wet rag
Okay, so first things first, make sure your jars are clean and dry.
Next, pour some Modge Podge into the stryofoam bowl. Add a tiny bit of water, like 2 tsp max. Then add five drops of blue and a drop of yellow (if you're going for the antique aqua look). Stir it all together with the popsicle stick (I would recommend not stirring with the foam brush, as when you try to get the excess out of the brush, it creates bubbles which then end up in your jar...and they don't bake out!). In all likelihood, the color will not be dark enough, so you may have to repeat the food coloring a few times. If there isn't enough green in the tint for you, add some more yellow, or even some green.
Now dump it into your jar, and roll it all around to coat everything. Use the foam brush as needed to smear it into any spots that haven't gotten covered. Try really hard to get an even consistent coat everywhere.
Dump out the excess, and wipe the outer rim of the jar with your wet rag. Then leave it sitting upside down on the foil (you might want two layers of foil to protect your work surface).
I personally left my jars to drain out the excess for around 45 minutes, to try to eliminate any runny stuff.
Then preheat your oven to 200 degrees. If you plan on having water in these jars, you must bake them, otherwise the Modge Podge will come right off. Baking also makes the Modge Podge translucent, whereas just letting it dry makes it more opaque.
Take out any extra racks from your oven and line the bottom with tin foil. Then carefully put tin foil over the wires of the rack still in the oven, as shown below.
Then wipe the outer rims of your jars one more time, and put your jars in, still upside down, and bake for about 45 minutes. Beware, the scent of baking Modge Podge is awful, try not to breathe it in.
Pull them out and let them cool overnight before putting anything in them.
It's very probable that your jars will not be perfect. I dealt with that by trimming them and turning any ugly spots to the center of the tables where they wouldn't be seen!
We then trimmed our jars with satin ribbon and burlap, and I made some cute monograms and date circles in Photoshop to add a little extra something. Then my husband's cousin, who is a florist at
Flowers for All Events, did a BEAUTIFUL job filling all the jars with flowers.
If you want to reuse these jars for another event, dump out the water as soon as possible and let them dry out. You may even want to rebake them (you can just stick them in the oven right side up) for 15 minutes or so if you plan to use them with water again.
Next up: candle jars!
See all posts from the wedding
here.
Since I wasn't sure about the flammability of Modge Podge, and I didn't want it to be overkill, I opted to merely trim the candle jars. I used quart jars for the tinted flower jars, and pint jars for the candles to give variety in height. I trimmed them with lace, raw edged fabric, ribbon, jute twine and leftover patterned paper from the picture frames. And I googled how long tea lights burn for, and I am happy to say they burn for an average of four hours. That was helpful, since tea lights are so much cheaper than votives! (You can get 100 for $3.99 at IKEA or 50 for $2.25 at Walmart.) Our open house was two hours, and we had not a single tea light burn out.
