4 for 4: Doing, Not Pinning

My summer goal to actually make a pin a week is going great, much better than I anticipated. Because, let's be honest here, I'm kind of flaky and have the attention span of a gnat. Four weeks in a row I have done at least one thing from my pin board. Last week I even did two things!

This week I finally got around to something that has been on my heart since last fall or before. My family has been suffering from a lack of gratitude for a long time now and I've been wanting to do something about it. So when I ran across this pin for the idea of a gratitude jar (right), I knew it was what I wanted.






This is what I came up with. I had all kinds of ideas for a gratitude jar. I was going to put a nice quilted strip around the middle of a mason jar, but I'm really not that good at quilting and I could never decide what colors I wanted anyway. Then I was going to get some glass etching paste and etch "Gratitude" down the side of my button jar, but then I would have to find a new button jar. Anyway, the upshot was that months went by and I never got around to doing anything.

Then, with all the pins I've been making lately, I decided it was finally time to make a decision and get this one done. I went through all my jars and vases and settled on this nice square clear vase that is narrower on the bottom than the top. At first I thought I would decorate it with Sharpie markers, but I seriously disliked anything I tried. Then I had the most artistic member of my family give it a try, but for some reason my 16 year old son didn't have the same enthusiasm for this as I did and his attempt was no better than mine.

Then I had a bit of a brainstorm. I have some leftover ink jet sticker paper from some project from a decade or so ago, and I'm pretty good with Photoshop Elements. So I created this. I then printed it mirror imaged (free transform tool, set at width -100%) onto the sticker paper. I did mirror image so that I could place the sticker on the inside of the jar, because previous experience showed me that this sticker paper peels up way too easily and I figured having it on the inside would limit that.

But even then the sticker didn't work as well as I had in mind. First, I forgot how not clear the sticker paper is. It's more vellum looking than clear. Still, I could be okay with that, but the paper also bubbled and folded terribly. Sigh.

At that point I rethought starting all over and going in a total different direction. But then the ridiculousness of this whole adventure hit me. Notice the original pin. It's just a quart mason jar with a lid. The purpose of this concept was just slips of paper with what you are thankful for stored in a jar. How crazy is it that how pretty the jar looked was mattering to me more than what I wanted to put in it. Sigh.

Anyway, here's the jar on my school bookshelf. I don't know why the handless Lego guy was on the shelf, but I had to move him to put the jar there so I just stood him up toward the front. Like my cool pencil can?