Previously...

I really need to get in the habit of doing this on a daily basis instead of lumping things together!  Let's recap last weekend:  April Fools Day (Friday) was spent with the kitties @ HOKAFI, a great way to spend an evening.  Saturday Shawn and I visited Surplus City - I got some small cans of Duplicolor spray paint for 50¢ a can and some other goodies.  All the colors were metallic, so I wasn't sure how the next craft project would turn out but I do love metallic so it must be ok!  A friend gave me some old mason jars so I could try to make some outdoor candle holders, and the original plan was to use flat blue to make the glass look mottled.  I went with a light blue & silver - seemed like good choices to me. 

 

Armed with my tiny cans of spray paint, I got an old plastic tray and filled it with water.  Then I sprayed splotches of paint, like so:

 

I then rolled the jars in the paint, repeating the process numerous times until the jars were pretty well covered.  If I had used a darker, non-metallic paint, it would've been important to not cover the jar too much. Too much paint then not enough light escapes and you're left with an ineffective candle holder.  The good thing about the metallic is it's so light it remains fairly translucent.  If you'd like to try this youself, it's important to get acetone based paint so it floats well on the surface of the water and doesn't break down.

 

Since there was some spare black spray paint in the shed, I decided to try something...

They seem a little more outdoorsy now, don't you think?  I found another jar in a kitchen cupboard and decided to experiment with the pink spray paint.  Unfortunately, the pink is NOT of the acetone variety so it got a little funky.  The pink broke apart when it hit the water, whereas the metallic paints was just a sheet on top of the water.  I still tinkered around with it anyway and ended up with this:

Eh, it's alright.  Some glitter, varnish, and black raffia sort of helped.  I also chipped off a few pieces of paint before glittering and varnishing to allow more light to get through.  I used a matte spray varnish, so the unpainted sections of glass appear smoked now - little bonus!  Three of the remaining jars will get  metal  hangers, and the other one is in the craft ER mingling with some black & turquoise ribbon, just sort of waiting to see what happens.