a merry christmas craft tutorial!

I have wanted to do a tutorial for so long! at last I have found a simple yet effective christmas craft that I want to share. It is super simple and if you want to make a few they are reasonably cheap! (bonus!)

I introduce you to the Winter Scene Jars!

The cast of Characters!
You will need:
Jars with lids (i bought some mason jars at the thrift store for 30 cents, and used a jam jar)
Pretty paper to cover lids
Scissors to cut pretty paper
Buffalo Snow snowflakes from Michaels
Cute trees (from Michaels they were 50% off!)
Little figurines like deer, mushrooms, cars, snowmen
Glue gun!

step one: pick what you want in your jar. 

make sure you jar is clean and dry and your glue gun is hot!
step 2: apply glue to bottom of first item and stick it in the jar

step 3: continue to apply hot glue to the bottom of items and continue sticking in jar.
(I had to bust out the tongs for the little deer, the jar opening was too narrow and I couldn't get my hand in)

step 4: admire your craftiness, and make sure you don't want to glue in anything else.

step 5: add snow. If you add too much, just dump some out.

step 6: pick some pretty paper, trace out your jar lid and cut.

step 7: twist the lid on, shake down your snow and put somewhere  like a window sill to admire!

I seriously love these winter scenes. I went crazy and made a ton of them, you can see from the pictures that I did a bunch of different things, but basically I used the steps above. These are so simple to make, it literally takes 5 minutes.

Some of my favorites...

I found a tutorial on using these little bristle trees and someone said that you can bleach them! Yup you can! It looks a little dingy white, but with a little dye can you imagine!? the little polar bear was from the small toy section in Michaels.

I bought some toy cars from the thrift store for .25 cents each, pulled the base off the tree and made a felt trunk, a little hot glue action and you got a tree on a car!

I love tractors, and found this little John Deere with the toy cars at the thrift store. I am keeping this one for myself because it is so cute and I am afraid that i won't be able to find another little tractor.

ok, so I really loved the cars....

I really don't like it when bloggers won't tell you where they found their supplies. So here you go. I tried to remember what I paid, don't quote me on the prices but know that I am thrifty and I wouldn't tell you lies.

Mason Jars: Local thrift store (not Value Village) .30 cents each with lids.
Buffalo Snow: Michaels $2.99 with a 50% off coupon! one bag did all 11 jars, plus I still have some left.
Deer, Mushrooms, Silver trees: .60 each, .20 each and .30 each respectively, from Scoop and Save which is a cake decorating store. I bought 6 of each.
Bristle Trees- Michaels it was a pack of 22 trees and with 50% off the Christmas items I paid $16. This works out to .73 cents a tree!
Paper- I had in my stash
Toy cars- local thrift store .25cents each I bought 5

Depending on what you put in your jars, you can do this for under $4 a jar! Fantastic I say!

I will be keeping my eyes open all year long for knick knacks to put in winter scenes for next year. I will be keeping my eyes open for little gnomes, foxes, wolves, and tractors! I will also be looking for Mason type jars through the year too, I much prefer them to up-cycled jam and pickle jars.

This project came from a mish-mash of ideas that I was wanting to do. I originally had seen snow globe jars on Pinterest for putting gift cards in. I wanted to make those for the gift cards I am giving at Christmas but was nervous about putting expensive gift cards in water. Then I thought I would just make snow globes, but I heard that the green bristle trees I wanted to use lose their color in water so that wouldn't work either. (They do by the way, I tried before bleaching out the white one.) Still wanting to make a snow globe type thing I made these!

I am daydreaming about next winter already!

Happy Crafting!