Project – Zen Aroma – Legacy Website

For my first project I thought I’d tackle something simple, yet still useful.

I have loads of ribbons, they’re all dumped in a basket just waiting to tangle with each other. With my nifty mason jar ribbon holder they’re now safely stored in a tangle free zone.

My inspiration came from a post I found on ‘A Casarella

My finished product definitely doesn’t look as cute, or tidy as hers, and I don’t have one of those fancy flower cut out lids, but it does the trick!

What you’ll need:

Mason Jar
130mm bolt with washer and nut

Tools & Equipment:

Hammer
Nail
Power drill & various drill bits
Metal file

Step One:

Take a non permanent marker and draw four lines crossing each other to establish where to drill the centre and ribbon holes.

Step Two:

Take your hammer and nail and gently tap the nail until it pierces the lid. Be very gentle as it doesn’t take much to get through the thin metal lid.

Step Three:

Use a small drill bit to drill a pilot hole through each of the nail holes, I used a 4 size drill bit for this step – this will make it much easier for the big drill bit to cut through the metal without warping the lid. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this step!

Step Four:

Use the larger drill bit to drill the full size holes, I used a 8.5 size drill bit for this step. After drilling you may have some sharp edges – I did and I found out the hard way how sharp they actually are! Use a round metal file to get rid of these.

Step Five:

Thread your spools of ribbon onto the bolt and feed the end of the ribbon through one of the holes in the lid. Once you have all your ribbon on the bolt, slide the bolt through the centre hole in the lid and secure with a washer and nut. Viola, you’re done!

I’m wondering if there might be a problem with the ribbons getting caught up with each other, but so far so good! It’s not the prettiest thing but you could definitely decorate the jar to jazz it up a bit if you felt like it.

I’ll be working on my next project this weekend, just in time for Mother’s Day…. stay tuned!

The humble mason jar has been on a serious come-back for a while now. What used to be solely reserved for people like my Granddad, and his case loads of preserved peaches, (literally case loads! I now have an aversion to tinned peaches because of the sheer amount of preserved peaches we used to have to eat in my childhood!), are now considered a fashionable.

I find myself being served cold drinks in mason jars virtually everywhere I go. You can’t go for five minutes browsing Pinterest without being bombarded with ideas on how to use mason jars in every which way other than what they’re originally designed for. So I thought I’d jump on that bandwagon!

The month of May has officially been dubbed “Mason Jar May”

For the next four weeks I’m going to set about attempting four different projects using various styles of mason jars. I stress the word attempting, because like any crafter will know grand ideas sometimes don’t come out as awesome “in the flesh” as they do in your head.

Stay tuned for my first project Mason Jar Ribbon Holder