Hand Made Gold Jam Jar Glasses

Hand Made Gold Jam Jar Glasses

This year, it was our turn to host the New Years Eve party.  Over the last few year we have crept up in numbers to 24:  5 families, with 10 adults and 14 children between us.

The adults will be eating in the dining room, while the kids will be having pizza and garlic bread in the kitchen.

For the kids table, I made these gold jam jar glasses for the kids to drink from using old jam jars and gold craft paint.  I personalised them with each of the kids names.

These will act as both a seating plan – so we can plan to make sure everyone will be happy with where (or who) they are sat next to.  It also means they can keep the same glass all night, and I don’t have to wash up 100 glasses the following day!  I find with paper or plastic cups, we also end up with loads of spillage, so there is some method to my madness.

I have made similar drinking glasses for kids parties before using jam jars, or mason jars in the past.  Obviously you don’t HAVE to paint them, just marking them with tape of a sharpie / chalk marker; so that they can be identified would be fine (but where the fun in that)!

I like the jars to be all different sizes and shapes – though approximately the same volume will help prevent arguments (you can tell I’ve done this before!)  It also helps that I never throw anything away, and was able to lay my hands on 14 glasses or similar size at short notice!

For each person you will need:

• Jam Jar or mason jar
• Masking tape
• Primer /undercoat
• Gold oil based paint
• Optional things to hang round the neck of the jar

First wash and sterilise the glasses thoroughly.

You don’t want the paint to go right up to the edge in case any of the paint flakes off and is consumed, so apply a line of masking tape around 1-2 cm from the rim of the glass.  This also gives a nice crisp edge.

I’ve found that the gold paint is quite thin, so its worth applying an undercoat in a light colour.  Undercoating will save you having to apply 3-4 coats of the gold paint.

Any household paint in a light colour is fine.

Leave to dry fully, then apply gold paint. Even with the undercoat, I still two coats of the gold.  Leave to dry fully in between.

Once dry, peel off the masking tape.  You should have a nice sharp edge.

I then personalised the jars with the kids names (you could just do initials, or some other marker).  It doesn’t take long.  If you don’t have puffy paint – sharpies would be good too.

I made decorations earlier in the week, and had some dove white limo left over, so I decided to pimp up a bit more by adding a star and a (slightly squishy initial) to each jar too.
String with gold embroidery thread.And we are ready to party.

Our adult party was a little less disposable. This is our newly decorated dining room. To tie in with the kids theme, I made 3 gold vases using the same method as for the glasses. These are Nutella jars.  Mental note: We eat too much nutella! I also made little tape flags for the adults to match the ones Id made for the kids.

Unfortunately no picture taken after this, as once the wine started flowing, all thought of photographs went out the window.  Suffice to say it was a good Hogmanay (New Years Eve), and the less said about tequila slammers the better.

…..And the clearing up.  The kids clear up took half an hour, with only one spillage on the night…..the adults glass washing tool several hours, so well worth the effort.