Beachy Solar Apothecary Jar

I see mason jars repurposed into solar lanterns all the time, so when I looked at this cute apothecary jar in my stash, I knew it would be a cool project.

I put this beachy themed solar light together for my daughter in law's birthday this week. Love you lots, Tracy! I love the way it turned out and I'll be making more, that's for sure. I've been seeing different solar light projects in blogland and knew I had to do this.

Walmart has these CHEAP, 2 for $3 CHEAP, solar lights on sale. The post is cardboard and plastic and striped, as you can see, with stars around the solar unit at the top. Yeah, you know me, I could NOT leave well enough alone.

The solar unit fit into the lid of this apothecary jar with some judicious toothpick spacers. Classy, eh? Still, far from what I envisioned. But the solar unit gets plenty of charge through the glass lid, so that's what I was looking for.

Twine wrapped jar neck, baby! Hot glue ahoy! Already I like the way it looks. Dollar Store twine and hot glue sticks plus a $2 thrift store apothecary jar. Simple simple simple.


Using some of my go-to textured wallpaper, I tacky glued it around the solar unit. It looks soooo much better and fills in the space formerly taken by my toothpick spacers. Much better.


I painted the top of the unit and the wallpaper to closely match the twine color. I shopped the house for beachy filler and added shells, sea glass and half marbles in green and white. Also, for texture and interest I added sliced pieces of cork. I love the smooth texture of the shells and glass with the cork's roughness. I added some trim using string, beads, buttons and a cork slice embellished with a tiny metal skeleton key . This was so much fun as I tried different combos of items to fix this light up!



And this is a real bear to photograph but here's what it looks like in the semi dark. The welding man used his dremel tool to cut off the little protusion at the bottom of the light, so it looks much cleaner. This light out on the deck after dark is just GORGEOUS! Love the soft glow on the glass and shells !!


I love the way this came out! And so did Tracy! Score! I will be watching for more of these jars to make her a set and also some for me.

I will be posting this pretty little light on the fun parties on my sidebar. Come visit me there and check out all the wonderful projects. So much cleverness and creativity out there, don't miss out!