I've been working on a post about my journey to Flourish (I went to the first retreat--yes, I am one of the women who took a leap of faith and traveled across the country to spend a weekend with people I had never met), but for today, I'll share with you the details on the mason jars glasses.
After the first retreat, I knew I wanted to do something to contribute to the second retreat. My mom, my dad, and I have been to Via de Cristo retreats, which are based on Spanish Catholic Cursillo methods, and have retained a lot of the Spanish influences, one of them being the concept of palanca. Via de Cristo retreat participants receive symbols of palanca throughout their weekend in the form of notes and/or trinkets, but palanca is really prayer for the participant. So these mason jar glasses were my palanca for the women of the second Flourish retreat; I prayed for Emily, KK, and all of the women who were going to be at Flourish as I made them.
I also knew that I wanted to do something that would be useful for the women while they were at the retreat. Since we mostly marked our names on disposable cups at the first retreat (with the exception of Emily's grandmother's awesome vintage peanut butter glasses), I thought it would be useful to do personalized, reusable glasses, and since the retreat has a rustic/vintage/shabby chic vibe, mason jars were perfect.
So. I'm sure you've seen 1,001 types of mason jars and 1,001 things you can do with them all over Pinterest. If you're buying them new at the store, they generally come in packs of 4-12--they usually have the brand name on one side, a picture on the other, and then measurements somewhere in between, so they're kind of busy to begin with. Therefore, I opted to go for Ball quilted jelly jars, which are sold individually (at least at Joann's, which is the only place around here that I've seen them).
For the personalization, I used Martha Stewart Crafts Glass Paint, which is supposedly cured and dishwasher safe after 21 days, or by baking in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes (I opted for the second option). I used the gloss opaque finish in Pool, Camelia Pink, Arrowhead, and Vanilla Bean (color not pictured below). Since I have perfectionist tendencies, I also opted for the Martha Stewart Crafts Adhesive Stencils instead of going freehand; I used the typewriter script and fair isle dot sets. Martha Stewart Crafts also makes a ton of other tools and accessories to go with their glass paints, including squeegees, pouncers and daubers, brushes, and scrapers, and I did actually buy a set of assorted pouncers, daubers, and rollers, but honestly liked the generic pouncer I already had (pictured below) better because it was more stiff and dried faster. I bought all of this stuff at Joann's or Michael's [with coupons].
The process was pretty simple: apply adhesive stencil to glass, dab the pouncer in a little bit of paint, dab it on the stencil, and remove the stencil before the paint is dry. I washed my stencils with water right away, and they held up through many uses.
I'd basically do the first letter one day, let the glasses sit for about 24 hours (Martha Stewart Crafts provided no guidance regarding how long the paint should cure before placing an adhesive stencil over it), do the second letter and the first accent the next day, and then do the final accent the third day. As I said above, they sell scrapers made specifically for removing paint from glass, but I found that a metal dental scraper worked just fine :)
Here's how the personalized mason jar glasses turned out:
Finally, let me say that the opinions on products mentioned in this post are my own, and not influenced by any sponsorship whatsoever (though if anyone wants to send me products to review, I'm game. Just saying).
