Mason jar flower arrangements

I’m always sticking flowers in jars, which make great vases. That is unless you have the kind of flowers that don’t stay standing upright or enough of them to wedge into the jar so they stay and look just how you’d hoped. 

Use this trick that I know I didn’t invent, but have no credit beyond necessity during a demo at the Union Square Greenmarket a few months ago when I was presented with lovely spring tulips, a notoriously fragile and support-needed kind of flower. 

Make a grid out of masking tape that will disappear as you populate it with different sorts of flowers. The grid also lets you work in taller flowers that would otherwise fall over. If you use the mason jar band as the base from which you start taping, you can remove it and re-use it for future arrangements.

Let there be light

Turn a dark corner into a radiant and unique place to plop down and read or sip or chat.

Since renting out our spare room, we are short one lamp and haven’t found a suitable cute (and affordable) replacement. Rather than hiding on the dark side of the living room, we opted to fill a vintage gallon jar with christmas lights to create a luminous object lamp, an objet d’art, if you will. 

Other great vessels for this kind of lighting arrangement include glass water pitchers, large glass pickle jars (if not full of fermenting carrots), or colored glass vases or jars.

Sweet endings, make jelly milk

This hip trick comes to us from Mary Elizabeth Rienzo Noll from Bayside Queens via her fab daughter Bernadette, co-founder of Future Craft Collective.

Whenever you find yourself at the bottom of a jam jar, use this depression-era trick for a treat. Pour the milk of your choice over the last scrapings of jam, add an ice cube and put the cap on it. Shake it like crazy, or better yet, have your kids shake it. Pop it open and enjoy your yummy shake treat! (You probably recall a past Hip Trick, showing how jam jar ends can also become to-go, fruit-on-the-bottom yogurts.)