Quick Christmas Craft: Fabric Covered Jar Lid

Believe it or not, Christmas is fast approaching.  Gasp!  Christmas?  Already?  You must be joking!

For realz.  No joke.  I can't believe it either.  But it has come to that time of year again, when some people are starting to get all fancied up for Christmas, and then others...are not.  Because they are wailing in disbelief.  That's what I am doing, in the innermost parts of my brain, but not out loud, or even in my thoughts, really.  I simply haven't been thinking about it too much.  Those times I have thought about it, it blows my mind almost out my ears.  Not quite, but almost.

I heard Christmas music on the radio the other day, for the first time this season.  I was in complete denial.  I am of the opinion that Christmas music SHOULD NOT be played on the radio before Thanksgiving, and actually, not until after Thanksgiving.  Well, that was two days before Thanksgiving!  Uh, not cool, mahn.

My sister has been calling me a scrooge because I don't like Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but the fact is, in our house, we've always been against Christmas music before Thanksgiving!  For realz, why do you need it that early anyway?  I don't get it.  Can't we just get one holiday over with before going on to the next?  Talk about a problem with going-on-to-the-next-thing-before-finishing-the-first-thing syndrome!  (It's gots to be a thing, but I don't know the fancy name for it.  I have it bad.)  Just so you know, I am not a scrooge, but everything in it's own time, right?

Anywho, the point eeyis, Christmas is quickly coming upon us, whether or not we like it (I do love Christmas, but WOWWIE WOO, this year went by fast!).  If you're like me, you'll wait until the last possible minute to get your gifts all ready, because you are a major procrastinator, or, you love Christmas and gift giving so much that you'll get your stuff done right away, except the problem is, you don't know ezackly what to give people, so you'll sit there, waiting to dig in, but you just don't know what to dig in to!

Well, I just may have a solution to both of those problemos.  Enter, fabric covered jar lids!  Not just the lids by themselves, obvs.  A jar with a pretty lid can be a great gift.  Fill it up with hot chocolate mix, or cinnamon sticks (just thought of that off the top of my head!), or simply give empty as a pretty storage jar! These are so easy and fun and quick, that you could make a bunch to give together.  I recommend using either a variety of jars with matching fabric, or a variety of fabric with matching jars.

I am doing a new thing now, which is called, "naming the supplies in list form."  I've never done that.  Not sure why.  But it's probably a good habit to pick up.  Don't hold me accountable to do it every single time though.

Supplees
Jar lid and jar to go under it (I used a salsa jar/lid)
Pretty fabric (not too thick, but thick enough to hide any pattern that might be on the lid)
Sticker Maker
Black sharpie
Scissors
Ribbon (optional)

The idea for this project stemmed from the fact that I have a whole drawer full of fabric.  Okay, not completely full to the brim (I store stuff other than fabric in it), but you know, basically full.  Observe.

The firstest time I did this was with the below jar.  I like the way that it turned out.  I was looking for a way to use some of my fabric, plus make that candle (that's what it is, in case you couldn't tell) look more attractive.  It's my opinion that that green wax is hid'jus.  I was quite happy that I had fabric that matched.  Then I did decide, "Well why not blog on it?  For realz, Maggie!"

Get 'Er Done
First thing is to select your jar/lid of course.  I suppose anything will work; just don't use canning lids.  Make sure to wash the lid before working with it.  This may seem way too obvious, but apparently not to me, because I was thinking at first I would only rinse out the lid.  However, I didn't want it to forever smell like salsa...so I done warshed it.  Even if it doesn't smell like whatever it was used for before, you should still wash it, since it may not be a good idea to wash it after it's covered with fabric.  The jar is not as important to wash now, but when you do wash it before gifting away, make sure to get the sticky stuff from the label off.  I got it off with very hot water and lots of scrubbing.

After selecting which jar and lid you'll use, you'll need to pick a pretty fabric.  If you're using this as a Christmas gift, maybe something red or green.  I didn't purposely use a Christmas-y green for mine, but how convenient that I did!

You don't need much fabric.  Only enough to have at least 3/4 inch around the lid on all sides (depending on how tall the lid is).  Trace around (on the wrong side) with a sharpie or other writing utensil, and then cut out.  Fun fact for your brain: In the picture below, I traced where I thought, at the time, was the right distance from the edge of the lid, but it was in fact, too close.  So I didn't actually cut on that line I'm drawing in the picture.  It's just for show.  Don't do it that close.  Basically, the distance should be about 2-1/2 to 3 times the width of the jar lid.

Now here's something myself hadn't considered: not everyone has access to a sticker maker.  What will we do now?  I suppose the best thing would be to "paint" glue onto the fabric circle with a paintbrush...  I'm a bad blogger for not thinking of a good alternative aren't I?  If you come up with something better than painting with glue, let me know in the comments!  Now that we are past that...I'll just ignorantly assume that everyone does have a sticker maker and move on.  :]  Carefully insert fabric into sticker maker, and turn knob until it starts to come out the other end.  At that point, it might stick to the "teeth," so you'll have to pry it off, which could be (only) slightly difficult, since the sticker maker manages to make things quite sticky.  You can do eet!

Now is the actual tricky part, assuming you do indeed have a sticker maker.  You have to get the fabric off the wax paper stuff that it's stuck onto at this point.  This can be very difficult, so try not to let much of your fingers touch the stickiness.  Because you can never again free them!  Never!*  It can also be difficult because the sticky stuff doesn't take a liking to fabric (what does it have against fabric?), so it tends to come off easily, so you have to kind of keep pulling the fabric up and and putting it back down over and over again until the stickiness stays on the fabric.  It really is not that hard once you get the hang of it.  Do it all around until you're able to pull up the whole piece, and then gently lay the whole piece down on your working surface, sticky side up!

*Just kidding.

After that, it's all truly fun, quick, and easy!  Gently lay the lid down in the center.  Don't worry if it's not exactly in the middle, just make sure there's enough room all around to wrap around the edge, and then inside.  Which is the next step!  Start by sticking the fabric up on the edge on two opposite sides (east and west), and then do it again on another two opposite sides (north and south).  Do that until it's stuck on the sides in eight or more spots.  Then stick down the fabric on the inside in two opposite spots, and eventually all around, in the same fashion as you stuck it up on the edge.  Or, you could go clockwise around in this part.  Whatever you do, make sure you stick the fabric down in every spot in a way so that there's stickiness in every spot, so it'll actually stick there.  (Did that make sense?  Heehee, try saying that ten times fast.)  The lid should still be able to screw onto the jar.

And you're done!  If you want to make it look even more fashionable, tie a pretty ribbon around the neck of the jar, and gift away to someone special!

This was before tying on a pretty ribbon.  The lid reminds me of a beret!

Pretty ribbon to the rescue!

I love the way the glass looks in this picture.

Somehow, I managed to make this incredibly easy activity look long and complicated by my abundance of words.  Hopefully you can still see how this is a quick and easy activity!

What would you fill the jar with?  How could you personalize this?