Painting or tinting jars can be pretty sloppy work, but with our great tips you will  learn not only how to paint mason jars easily but with very little mess! To be fair these start out looking painted but end up being beautifully translucent. You can determine how dark or light a tint you want them by how much food coloring you add.   (P.S. These are for decor purpose, not for drinking.) We’ve got some wonderful crafts you can make with these including our Bohemian Style Jar and Light Decor and our Woodland Mason Jar light. You could also etch the jars before coloring. And you’re in luck because we can show you how to etch glass in 5 minutes!

Supplies

• Mod Podge
• Food Coloring Gel
• Pint Mason Jars Single  Set of 12
• Plastic cups, 9 oz.
• Plastic spoons

Instructions

Gather the basic items. Grab two plastic cups per jar for easier work. 

For a pint jar use about 1/4th cup of Mod Podge, gloss or matte.

Drop in food coloring. More for darker less for lighter. It changes color as you can see when baked.

Stir well, adding more until it’s as dark as you like. Stir it with a plastic spoon and you can just toss it when it’

If you’ve had the Mod Podge a while it can thicken and you don’t want the mixture extremely thick.  Add a tiny bit of water at a time to thin it out some if needed. It’s now ready to pour.

Pour the mixture into the jar.

Slowly spin the jar to coat the sides, working your way up evenly to the top.

Pour the leftover back into the cup, turning the jar to coat. The thread part of the jar generally does not need to be completely covered as it will have a lid on it.

We suggest using a separate cup to put your bottles in for draining. If you do use the same cup with the extra in it, wipe off the edge so that glue does not get on the outside of the bottle. We learned that the hard way. Ü

Turn the jar upside down and place it into the clean cup. (Notice the glue on the edge of the cup which we had to scrub off our bottle!)  Let this sit for a couple of hours or even overnight.

If you do more than one you can line them all up! The color changes quite a bit after baking. These are actually purple and hot pink!

Place any left over glue into small containers for later use!

AIR DRY: The time needed to air dry your jars will vary greatly depending on  the temperature. It might take a few days. You can leave them in the cups but I’d suggest poking holes around the upper sides of the cups so air gets into them as they dry.

BAKING: Baking is optional but it’s much faster. Place your well drained jars onto a baking dish or pan covered with foil.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees and bake the jar until the color becomes translucent or see through. This will usually take anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes.

This jar just came out of the oven.

And that’s how to paint mason jars!