Mason Jar – stay at home drama

Here, we added a cute little owl WHOOOOOOse eyes are glowing and ready for Halloween. Yup–you guessed it, $1.00–at Dollar Tree!

YES–Ball® makes limited edition purple mason jars and YES you can make adorablely cheap crafts with them!! Toddler friendly Halloween decorations that will keep you and the Kidd-o busy for an hour or two–coming your way! I made this one up, while I was unpacking my Halloween decor last week…annnnd I wanted to share it!! These are “ghostly trees”.

Ball® exclusive purple mason jars, floral wire, wire cutters (or strong kitchen scissors) bag of decorative rocks. (We had the black, but the clear stones would be best to show off the purple!) string or fishing line, twigs, lace tulle or cream gauzy/tulle fabric

If you haven’t noticed, I like Dollar Tree… So that’s where I grabbed the styrofoam, floral wire, wire cutters, rocks, and string. I bought the tulle rolls at Walmart for 2.97, and the Ball® mason jars can be purchased at http://www.freshpreservingstore.com! We mixed our trees up by using the Ball® Heritage Collection Pint and Quart sized jars.

arrange your twigs and branches to look “tree-ish” and then you are ready to wrap the wire around their trunks. To make this craft adult friendly–you could spray paint the sticks silver for a more fancy look!

First off, head outside, let the kids play! While you’re out there, they will LOVE searching the yard for the perfect “creepy” sticks to create their ghost trees with…(and if they’re like my toddler–they’ll enjoy poking you with the sticks too!) Gather a good handful of sticks and branches that will make up the “tree” part of the craft! You’ll want them 12-18 inches long or so… and obviously you can cut them/snap them to be shorter.

take a kitchen knife or scissors and just chop away at it until you can push it through the top of the mason jar.

Cut and shape a chunk of the green styrofoam to insert into the top of the mason jar and shove that sucker way down to the bottom. You could add a drop of hot glue to the inside base of the jar to stick it to, but you don’t have to!

once you’ve positioned the branches to look like a tree, wrap the floral wire tightly around the base! (about 3-4 inches up from bottom)

Put the silver ring of the mason jar cover back on, leaving the disc off, so you can easily stick the tree into the styrofoam at the bottom of the jar. Again, you could add a blob of hot glue to the styrofoam so it sticks to the “tree” when you push it down–but you don’t have to!

Add some tulle to the bottom of the jar surrounding the styrofoam so it doesn’t show through jar. If you gather the tulle and bunch it up around the styrofoam it’ll work best.
Add a few of the black rocks on top of the styrofoam around the “trunk” of your tree and it’ll add a little weight to your jar and keep the tree in place as well.

NOW. Make your ghosts! As silly as it sounds, grab a few paper towels and cut them into small squares about 4×4 and crumple it up to be the ‘head’ of the ghost. Have cottonballs? Use one per head if you’d rather! Cut your roll of cream lace or tulle in about 8 inch long pieces (leaving the width as is), and place the crumbled paper towel in the center of the fabric. Fold the fabric over and gather it under the ghosts head. Tie in a simple bow with the string. Make the bow loops big enough so you can hang the ghosts on the tree once you’e made them all.

Make anywhere between 5-8 depending on size of trees and preference. You can trim your ghosts to whatever size and shape you want! Hang those little cuties on the trees and there ya have it! a $4-$8 halloween craft! (depending on what you already have at home for supplies!)