Coloring Jars Experiment

Here are my results of experimenting with coloring glass jars, or the horrible, the nasty, and the passable.

Most of the tutorials circulating are to use food dye, usually the gel type with a small amount of warm water and add these to Mod Podge.  I don't have any  Mod Podge, what I do have are other glues collected and unused, so I decided to go ahead and use some of them to see what would happen.  I used my liquid dyes, at one time I had the gel food dyes, which I liked, but didn't have right now.

In the jars in the image on the left I used clear Elmer's Glue, water, and dye in the smallest jar to get a red translucent/stained glass type of result- which is what I was aiming for.  For the two green jars and the dark jar where I was aiming for a look of a big jar of Yoo Hoo chocolate milk I used white Elmer's Glue, water,  and mixed the dyes. In this image the jars are upside down and draining off the excess mixture before putting them in the oven at 180 F for 25 minutes.

To view bigger, click on the image.

The only jar to retain the coating and color after baking them in the oven was the red jar.  In the second image from the left, you can see how the colors just disappeared after baking in the oven.  My chocolate milk look disappeared completely except for the ring at the bottom of the jar.  The dark green jar was a little streaky.  The other green jar came out a bit brown and with a big ring in the bottom, too.

After the jars were completely cooled, I washed out the interiors and thoroughly dried them in order to try another experiment.  In the next image I used Aleene's Collage Glue, water, and paint, not food dye.  This image shows the jars after they were drained, baked, and cooled.  I didn't put the red jar back in as I was satisfied with the result from the first baking.

Even though the chocolate milk jar, the bright orange jar, and the turquoise jar were well coated and drained before baking- they still came out of the oven not looking like they were done properly.  The orange jar was somewhat streaky and the turquoise jar was less streaky, but not as nice as I wanted it to be.  The chocolate jar was just not working.  I think there must have been something about that jar that did not adhere the liquid to the surface.  It also had angles which were harder to cover, but the jar just repelled the mixtures both times.

In the last image you can see the red jar with silk flowers in it.  The majority of the tutorials are to make the jars have a shabby chic look, but I was aiming for a translucent style.  I may try this experiment again, but I would rather just paint the outside of the jar, maybe use a stencil or design on it, too.  In this way, the inside could be used to store things or used in some other way and the paint would not be scratched off in the jar by the items put inside it.



Now, if I could just stop thinking about cold chocolate milk, I haven't had a  Yoo Hoo for years, have you ever had one?   Even though the jars experiment was kind of a flop, I'm glad I tried it to see what would develop.

Do you like to branch out and experiment or are you not a gambler in that way?