Mason Jar Safe

I love making crafts and I love it even more when they turn out the way I had hoped. I saw this great idea on Linda's site @ Behind My Red Door. I thought it was a great idea and I decided to make some myself. Linda used rice in her jars, but I decided to use oats in mine. Basically, you take a plain old Mason Jar, a toilet paper roll, a hot glue gun and your choice of filler. Clean and dry your jar out, put hot glue on the rim of the toilet paper roll and place it on the bottom of the jar. Once that has had a chance to dry then you fill the outside of the jar with your filler. I used oats, but you can use beans, rice, pasta or anything you want to put in your jar. Once you are done then you can decorate your lid however you would like. I took some old homespun and made them a bit grubby along with my tags and then added the homespun to my lid along with my tag. Below are some pictures that I included for you. The first picture is of the tags before I made them grubby.

This picture was taken after the tags were sitting in the grubby mixture

Here is what you can use the jar for. It is a great place for hiding money!!

Here is one finished jar.

Here is the other finished jar.

This label sat in the grubby mixture for 5 minutes. The mixture is basically 2 cups of hot water, 1/4 cup of instant coffee, 3 tea bags and a small amount of cinnamon. You basically mix the ingredients above, let the tea bags set for awhile and then take them out. Stir to mix up well and then soak your tags for approx 5-10 minutes. I went 5 minutes on my tags. Place the tags in a single layer on a paper plate that is lined with paper towels and microwave for approx 40 seconds. You want to go intervals of 40 seconds so they don't burn. VOILA - they are done and ready to use. Before microwaving them you need to sprinke with a bit of cinnamon. I myself seem to like the ones without the cinnamon, but you can pick because there are pictures of both. Once they are totally dry then you can stamp your label or hand write on them. Pretty simple if you ask me. The only drawback of working with this mixture is that your fingers smell like coffee for a little while and with me not being a coffee drinker.... well, it is just not the scent that I want to smell over and over (lol).