An Adventure like no other...: Dried Flowers in painted Mason Jars DIY

From my previous post, I spoke on what inspires me in my crafting, and one of them is just browsing Pinterest! Well, this little number I saw some mason jars painted up and glossed up and even some had decoupaging done, I decided to do the same thing, but instead of keeping it perfect and glossed I wanted to make my jar looking rustic!

This was extremely simple to make and an absolute joy!

What you will need to make ONE of these jars:

A size mason jar of your choosing (I bought about 12 for about $10 at my local Walmart).
Acrylic paint for glass, the color(s) of your choosing.
Sponge

Gloss top coat
Dried flowers
Fine sanding paper

The type of colors I was looking for were those that would not only compliment the color scheme of our apartment but also that would go well with the flowers that I had dried for about 3 months prior.

I had two acrylic paints going on, I wanted a base color which was: Dark Chocolate (the brand: Americana) and a plaid purple color (the brand Folk Art). Both paints plus The top coat spray (Brand: Krylon) I got at Michaels.

What I did was first paint the base color on the inside of the jar, the reason to do that is because when you sand down the paint, you don't want to look through to a clear jar, you want some sort of dark look there. Trust me, that "clear" look doesn't look all that "rustic", it just looks like a bad accident! HaHa!

Then of course you will want to paint the outside of your jar with long strokes as you want the paint to go on evenly. Allow the paint to completely dry (which if you do it in the sunlight as I did will dry very quickly!), before adding another coat (in the jar and outside).

After your desired look, you then are able to add on your next color! Again, you will do the same as the first coat. After you are done with the second color you will then spray evenly your clear finish and allow your jar to completely dry (mine took about 3 hours to do so).

Once it is dry, take your fine sanding paper and begin to "take off" the gloss, what I did is I purposely took off a chip or two of the paint off to give it that worn look!

Then all you got to do is arrange your dried flowers the way you like!

What I did, was I made a total of 6 of these plus take a couple of pallet wood and distressed the wood by:

Wetting the wood entirely.
While still wet I drizzled a small bit of the Dark Chocolate Acrylic paint and took a paper towel and started to smear it all over the wood. Then I allowed it to dry.

After the wood completely dried I then drizzled white acrylic paint on it (brand: Americana, Snow White.) and used a bristled brush and used hard long strokes all over. Do not cover the wood with paint, you want to just sporadically cover the pallet.