This week I was looking to make a gift for a friend who recently moved & started a new job. I thought something simple & cute would do the trick as either an accessory for her office or her home! Thus, this quote jar.
All in all, I thought the gift turned out super cute & for only $3.99, I'm now aching to make my own! (Note: $3.99 is the cost of the jar; all other materials, I already had in my craft supplies.)
I started by picking out scrapbook paper I wanted to use to write the quotes on for the inside of the jar, and also scrapbook paper to lay on the inside of the jar. I used this TrendSetter paper I had recently gotten from Overstock (but you can also get it from scrapbook.com at a cheaper price.)
The TrendSetter paper was for the quotes inside, and luckily the stripes sheet you see above was from another packet I had recently picked up, the Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm set (bought at Overstock.) You can also visit American Crafts to checkout the rest of the Dear Lizzy collection! Love love love the designs.
I measured out a piece that would fit inside the jar and cut it out. Unfortunately, 12 inches just barely misses the mark in length to fully wrap around the inside, so I had to cut off an extra sliver and tape it to the wraparound for the back of the jar. You could probably leave it open entirely, as who really looks at the back of the jar anyway? Or, you could print a design on legal paper so there'd be no gap.
The paper I used was just striped, as above, but I wanted to add something to fancy it up in the front. In my scrapbook set, there was this little tag and I used scalloped scissors to cut around it. You could use this space to personalize the item, maybe use a monogram, paper cut outs, or stickers - the options are endless!
Next came time to start the quote part of the craft. For this project, I went to my friend's Quote Pinboard and picked quotes from there to use. Since I was unsure of where she may put the jar, I picked quotes that seemed mostly applicable and inspirational to a wide variety of people if they were to read a quote in the jar. I think using quotes you specifically know your friend enjoys is the best way to go, but you could also pick whatever quotes you really wish.
Too lazy to handwrite all of the quotes... I planned on typing. Since the paper I was using was only 6 x 6, I decided I would cut them into post-it shaped squares and use the template for printing on post-its (the one I used can be found on One Good Thing.) I made 6 documents of the quotes, then sheet by sheet would tape the squares of scrapbook paper to my printed template and feed them through the printer. If this sounds like a lot, it really wasn't! It was pretty painless, and I only had to use one sheet of printer paper this way and the tape was good for all 6 prints. I printed on the white side of the scrapbook paper so that, when folded, the design side would be what you'd see.
With the printing, the template print on some of the squares that I had cut too large (as I started to do it more by eye than my ruler), but I just trimmed the edges at the end - again, pretty painless!
I folded up all my quote squares into quarters. With 6 pages (36 quotes on post-it note sized paper), the fit is pretty snug, just FYI. But I simply had to tuck them within each other, and I think it is better to have more quotes than less.
Et voila! You could use this same idea for more than quotes: you could store wishes you have, tasks to finish, memories, and I'm sure many other things that I can't think of right now! Any other suggestions or have you made something similar for yourself? Let me know!
xoxo e
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