Littlebits by Emily Collette: Wintry Scene Jars

I made wintry jars a few years ago as a gift to my mom and have been really fond of taking them out with our holiday decorations ever since. After finding some nice jars in the dollar section at Target, it inspired me to make a few more. This time I used some different colored trees and added a few little critters. I also used buffalo snowflakes, which I thought would be really pretty, since in the previous jars I just used glitter and pom poms. What I like about these jars are just how easy they actually are and how whimsical they look. There are quite a few ways you can do them whether you use a variety of jars sizes, different colors and styles of trees, various ribbons or other string around the outside, types of snow and glitter, or even using real fairy lights instead of snow. They are also a nice gift for someone and would even be a good family project to put together during the holidays. I think they are also great to keep out after Christmas during the winter months to add a little more wintry cheer.

My original jars (I used an empty tomato sauce jar, a mason jar, and a baby food jar!) with Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas on in the back (I pretty much have it on the whole month).

What You’ll Need:

• Mason jars in different sizes

• Glue (I used a mix of super glue and Aleen’s tacky glue)

• Mini bottle brush trees

• Buffalo snowflakes, small white pom poms, white or iridescent glitter

• Ribbon

• (optional) Little critters to place in the scene

• (optional) Styrofoam pieces (to raise your scene higher in the jar)

Directions:

1. To begin you’ll want to pre lay out the scene you want to display in your jars. This will help you know what you want to do and allow you to also test if they will fit into the jars. I had two small jars and two large jars. For each jar I decided on two or three trees, each in different colors and sizes, as well as one critter.

2. Once you decide what you want in each jar, place it into the inside lid and practice putting the jar over the scene. This will show you if the jar fits over your scene and how far into the jar the scene will be.

3. Because my jars were pretty large in comparison to my items, testing the scene out showed me that the pieces needed to be a bit higher up in order to see them better in the display. To fix the problem, I use a knife to cut round styrofoam pieces that I could glue the scene onto.

4. After my Styrofoam pieces were cut, I used super glue to attach them onto the middle of the inside of the lid.

5. I allowed the styrofoam to dry a bit, and then used tacky glue to attach my pieces onto the foam. I made sure there was quite a bit of glue so that the items would stay secure. I then let it dry over night.

6. With my foam pieces exposed, I decided to brush glue onto them and sprinkle some of the glitter and snowflakes onto it. This wasn’t necessary, but I figured it would add some extra coverage in case the styrofoam became exposed whenever the jars are shaken around.

7. With all the pieces glued together and dried, it was time to assemble the jars. To start this, I took each jar and poured a mix of snowflakes, glitter, and mini pom poms. I like that the pom poms look like little snowballs!

8. With the snow in the jar, I then screwed the lid, with the trees and critters attached, onto the jar. I turned the jar upright to see where the snow would lay in the scene. It was a bit too much, so I unscrewed the jar and poured some out. I did this for all my jars, shaking them around until the snow looked right and came up to an appropriate spot in the jar. The glitter started to stick to the glass a bit too much, but have settled down after a few days.