If you know me, or have followed this blog long enough then chances are that you know one simple fact – I love pencils. I just do. I can’t tell you why but I always have. That’s one reason teacher gift ideas make me happy. They almost always involve a pencil like this cute DIY Pencil Mason Jar.

Painted mason jars are easy gifts because they can be great cost savers. If you save your glass jars, you could have a huge stock of jars to pull from. I actually just pulled this old spaghetti sauce jar from the top shelf of the cabinet to use. You can also buy mason jars if that’s more your jam.

The one tip to being successful with this project is to use a wide mouth jar. Since it looks really cute full of pencils when completed, you want to easily be able to grab one of those pencil from a wide mouth jar.

So you want to make a pencil mason jar? Let’s get started.

You’ll need:

• Wide mouth medium sized mason jar.
• Acrylic craft paint in colors – pink, yellow, off-white, gray and black.
• soft bristled paint brushes
• Twine or jute
• Glue gun
• Pencils! Ticonderoga’s are my personal favorite.

To start, paint the bottom of the jar pink. This will be the eraser part. I painted the entire bottom and then about an inch around the sides of the bottom.

I know some of my Type A friends will want to use tape and get perfect lines. You can do that. But….it will take you longer because you’ll have to wait for the paint to fully dry before applying tape anywhere that might touch the tape.

I’m an eye-ball it and call it good type person so I just tried to get straight lines. The edge of the pink also doesn’t matter because you’re going to cover it with a silver line when you’re done.

Painting mason jars isn’t hard but it does take many thin coats with a soft bristled paint brush. Patience is key. But that’s one reason that this is a good craft for teacher gifts. Do one thin coat and then set it down upside down to dry and move to the next one. You can make a fast assembly line and most likely, by the time you’re back to the first one it will be ready for another coat.

After the pink, paint the yellow section, which is the largest section.

Next, paint a small off-white band at the top of the yellow section, right below where the mason jar would screw on.

Finally use your black paint to paint the area where the lid would go black.

When you’re done with this part, it should look somewhat like the picture above. Notice how I carefully made mostly straight edges where the two colors connected? It’s not perfect but it adds to the fun an whimsy.

If you look though you’ll also notice that there’s one color missing. The gray! Yup, the last thing you’ll paint is the gray band that represents the metal that holds the eraser onto the pencil. I painted it right over the edges of the pink and yellow and it worked great.

Because I’m a pencil-loving-nerd, I felt like it really needed a NO. 2 stamp. I used typewriter font stamps that I already had to add a NO. 2. You can do this if you want, skip it altogether or use the pencil transfer method.

The last step is to add a jute or twine ribbon around the top. I cut a long length, tied it around the top and then hot glued it down to where I wanted it to stay.

There you go.. an easy, affordable and super cute pencil mason jar.

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