Craft a Holiday Party Candy Container
As I have mentioned before, I have chickens; 8 chickens and 2 guineas. We just got them in August and they grow so fast.
We had them shipped from a chick hatchery in Texas and the weekend before they arrived, we got them a little feeder from our local feed store. This little feeder has so much crafting potential.
It wasn’t until my soon to be mother-in-law came over to visit and had the bottom of one of these feeders. I immediately thought to myself, “She’s going to get chickens!!”
Ha! No.
She proceeded to tell me about a Ball Jar craft where a small mouth mason jar will screw on where the plastic feeder for chickens would go. And then you just decorate the outside for whatever occasion. This really intrigued me and so excited to do this craft.
There are so many different ways to decorate this crafty feeder. Initially I thought of decoupaging wrapping paper on the mason jar and then do the feeder part in a different wrapping paper design. But after thinking about it, I’ve done a lot of decoupage lately. So I looked to other inspirations.
After teaching English in Japan, I moved to Bellingham, WA where my mother was living at the time.
After finding a job, I didn’t know the area or people very well so I thought the best way to do that would be to volunteer my free time at a local non-profit organization.
I did some research and found a local arts organization; Allied Arts of Whatcom County, www.alliedarts.org. Through this organization, I met many amazing people and artists.
The first year I volunteered, I worked the Holiday Festival of the Arts, which usually starts a week before Thanksgiving and continues until Christmas Eve.
At this festival, I met a very talented artist Irene Lawson. Irene uses geometric patterns used in Pysanky, Ukranian decorated eggs, in her ceramic works. You can find out more about Irene and her work at www.etsy.com/people/irenelawson. Her artistic style is my inspiration of this week’s craft.
I painted the mason jar green, the chicken feeder white, and the base brown. Once dry, I sketched out on the mason jar my design of holly leaves and the words “Happy Holidays” with pencil.
When making a mistake, I was able to erase somewhat. I think if I had a better eraser, my mistakes would disappear but they aren’t that noticeable once I dotted the design with a contrasting color. You can easily erase mistakes by repainting the area and then redrawing your design if an eraser didn’t work.
I squirted some white paint onto my make-shift paint pallet.
Using a toothpick, I dotted the outline of “Happy Holidays”. When my dots got too small, I reloaded my toothpick with paint and continued the outline.
My fiancee asked me while I was sketching the holly what color it would be since the jar was green. I made a little darker green by adding brown and red to my “Christmas Green” paint. Then dotted the holly and followed that with dotting the berries in “True Red.”
After everything dried, I felt the holly didn’t stand out enough so I went back over it with gold paint. That made it stand out better. In hind sight, I would probably paint the jar a lighter color for the holly and berries to stand out better.
On to the feeder. With the solid white exterior and brown base it did not look festive at all. I painted upside down tear drops in alternating colors of red and green with toothpicks.
Finally to add some more festive coloring, I did four small dots and then a larger dot in gold paint between the tear drops.
The last thing I added was a ribbon.
I took red curling ribbon and made it into a big floppy bow by looping the ribbon. Using my hot glue gun, I secured it to the top of the mason jar. After the glue hardened, I cut the loops and curled the ribbon.
My Holiday Party Candy container was ready for small candy coated chocolates and a couple small spoons for retrieving the treats. If you make this craft or something else out of a chicken feeder bottom, we would love to see your creativity.
Send pictures of your crafts to kwright@americanpress.com and I will share them on our Facebook page. If you have extra craft supplies or crafts you would like to sell, place an ad in Creative Crafter and watch them go buh-bye. As always, Happy Crafting!!
Creative Crafting with Kim prints on Saturdays. If you would like to advertise your crafting business or sell leftover crafting supplies call the American Press Classified department at 337-494-4000 or email djean@americanpress.com. Deadline to place a display ad is Wednesday at 4pm and line ad deadline is Friday at 4pm. Feedback about this article can be sent to kwright@americanpress.com.