DIY: A JAR FULL OF KISSES

I began collecting baby food jars from some wonderful families for about a year & a half before my wedding. I collected so many that I was able to use 150 for these wedding favors & still have almost 200 left over to hold tea light/votive candles. I will warn you.. cleaning some of the jars was a pain! But it saved money & I think the favors came out adorable.
What I used:
  • Scrapbook paper from Michaels
  • Clean baby food jar with lid
  • Mod Podge- Matte
  • Tan yarn
  • Scissors
  • Pen or pencil
  • Paint brush or foam brush
  • A 2″ circle hole punch (for the tag)
  • Regular Hole punch
  • “A jar full of kisses” printable that I so nicely uploaded here for you to use (:
What I did:
  • Clean the baby food jar by soaking it in hot water with Dawn dish soap for a bit. The paper should fall off easily. I used a butter knife to scrape off the stubborn glue, sometimes I was lucky & it just slid right off. I found that the organic baby food brands were oddly much easier to clean! See, people? Organic is good! (;
  • Take the back side of your scrapbook paper & draw the outline of your lid.  Keep in mind you won’t be actually cutting ON this this line but rather around it.. You need to leave extra room around your circle for you to be able to fold the paper over the sides still. So you might want to try one out before you trace them all over the back of your paper! You could be fancy & use a pencil compass if you want to be exact. Usually I’m very precise & meticulous about my crafts but this one I just eye-balled. I was impatient, haha
  • Once you get the sizing right, you can stack your papers & cut out more than one at a time to make it go faster.
  • Cut slits all around the circle as shown below.
  • Take your paint brush/foam brush & paint Mod Podge liberally on the white side of the paper. Center the lid on your paper & begin pressing each “flap” around the sides. I found it helped when I also painted Mod Podge on the top of the paper as well. This way, the paper was saturated & easily bendable. I realize I should have taken more pictures of what I was doing, I just got so into it I forgot.. also, my hands were super messy haha. It should look like this:
  • Make sure you let them dry on a place where the Mod Podge won’t get stuck! I used a table cloth. If you are a Mod Podge pro you know that it has a pretty quick drying time so depending on how many you are making, you could be done in no time!
  • Since I was using these as wedding favors, I enlisted my mom & now husband to fill 150 jars with Hershey’s kisses. Thanks, guys! (: Before I went & bought a ton of bags of kisses, I bought one to see how many could fit in each jar. Turns out 13 was the magic number. Which just happens to be my favorite & a very significant number in my life. It’s the little things that make me smile (:
  • I got the biggest bag of kisses they sold at either Sam’s Club or Costco.. I’m pretty sure it was Sam’s. You can figure out how many kisses are in each bag if you just find the amount per serving & number of servings in each bag. Just multiply those together & that’s the approximate count in the bag. For 150 jars at 13 per jar I needed 1950 pieces. I think I bought 6 bags & had leftovers. The extras make for a good pick-me-up between stuffing all those jars! (:
  • Once the kisses are in the jar, put the lid on. Obviously. Haha
  • Cut the yarn long enough to fit around the top of the jar with a bow
  • I made a printable for the jar that said “A jar full of kisses from the Mr. and Mrs.” using Microsoft Word. There’s a way to manipulate the text into different shapes, I just chose a circle shape & experimented with word positioning until it looked good & even. I have a link to this printable posted above on the “What I Used” section if you just want to download that one (:
  • After printing the tag, I used my 2″ hole punch to cut out each one.
  • Make a hole with your regular hole punch wherever you think looks good, I liked my tags to hang on an angle so I did mine on the left side.
  • String the yarn through the hole & tie a bow.
  • TA DAAA! You’re finished!! Everyone loved & complimented these little jars, & I was so proud of them.. which, trust me, doesn’t happen that often.. I’m a perfectionist haha
I hope I did an okay job explaining this, comment below if you have any questions!
Kisses,