For Christmas presents this year, I took a bunch of peanut butter jars (I eat a lot of peanut butter), and decoupaged them turning them into decorative jars for holding pencils, loose change, and various other things.  I then gave these out as presents.

This tabblo walks through what things we used and how we made them.  The project materials are inexpensive and the process is very easy to do.

First off, use Mod Podge.  It's fantastic stuff.  It dries pretty quickly, dries clear, it adheres to glass (and other things), it's not too hard to clean up if you get it in places you don't want to get it, it seems to be waterproof when it does dry, and it's great stuff for attaching the snippets of paper to the jars.

We tried a few other things like watered down Elmer's glue and YES paste, but the Mod Podge worked much much better.

We got a big thing of Mod Podge and a smaller one with sparkles.

S and I eat a lot of peanut butter.  I think we average a little over a jar a week.  We really like Teddie peanut butter because it's just roasted peanuts and a little salt.  The jars are great and the lids for the organic Teddie peanut butter are plain white lids.

If you take the label off, then there are no markings on the jar or lid.

Taking the labels off the peanut butter jars turned out to be easy.  The Teddie folks must use an adhesive that dissolves in water.

Anyhow, I just put the jar in a pot of water for 5-10 minutes and then the label just falls off in my hand.

For the last month and a half, S has been cutting little snippets of paper from the dozens of new-bride-to-be catalogues, flower catalogues, and magazines that we keep getting.

She tried to mix it up a bit so we had paper snippets that had vibrant colors, interesting patterns, complex textures, and various other things.  The strips are rectangular and average about 1/4 inch wide by and 1 1/2 inches long. 

About half way through, S tried cutting other shapes: circles, spirals, squares, triangles, ...  Other shapes work fine, too, but in some cases it's hard to get the paper snippet flat against the curved glass.

We had one box top that had a random assortment of snippets and then we had a bunch of sorted snippets by color: red, green, and blue.

Once you start decoupaging, you end up with Mod Podge on your finger tips.  It's easier to lay out a bunch of paper snippets that you think are interesting in front of you before starting (for some reason I keep calling this a pre-compute step).

First, I hold the jar in one hand upside-down.

Then I apply some Mod Podge to the jar.  I put a bunch of snippets on the Mod Podged area in a carefully random pattern.  Then I take a brush and dab some more Mod Podge on the snippets to make sure they fully Mod Podged and are flat against the glass.  I keep going until I've covered everything I think should be covered.

After I finish, I put the jar down for an hour in a semi-well-ventilated area (we used our kitchen).  I think it's usually dry by then.

After it's dry, I roll the jar against the table to flatten out the surface.  This will also crush some of the "bubbles" that occurred.  After flattening, I apply another coat of Mod Podge, wait an hour.  I apply coats like this until the edges and the surface are smooth.

Here's one jar I did.  It has windows in it that allow you to see the stuff on the inside.  To be honest, the jar looks a lot better in real life than in the picture.

I figured I could put a piece of paper in the jar with little drawings that would be seen through the window.

This is another jar I did with intersecting red strips.  I did the vertical ones in one pass, let the jar dry, and then did the horizontal ones.  Then I did a coat of Mod Podge and then a coat of Mod Podge with glitter.  This one sparkles, though you can't see it in the picture.

And that was my Christmas project of 2006.  S and I made 13 jars just like these with various designs and patterns in them. 

We found it useful to think of applying the strips as you would build a collage or a mosaic.  Strips can be added in layers over rounds of drying. 

The Mod Podge doesn't seem to add any haze to the glass, though you can see the lines from the brush strokes.

That's it!