Happy Tuesday Everyone! I hope the weekend was fabulous for all of you, whatever you got up to. Mine consisted of watching movies and sleeping! The perfect way to spend the weekend *cough*everyday*cough* if you ask me :) So, if you've been following me for a while now, you may remember that it has been one of my goals of the year for a few years now to make my own memory jar. I think that they are such awesome little creations, all about positivity which I'm trying to fill my life with more for 2018.
I don't know why it's taken me so long to get around to making one! Most probably it's a mixture of putting everything on the back burner as usual; I just procrastinate so much, it's ridiculous, and also that I was pretty nervous about getting to the end of the year and having an empty jar or at least a not-very-full one! However, this year it's my aim to be more productive and to do some of the things that I've been putting off for so long. And thus I finally put together my own memory jar! So, I thought it would be nice to share it with you guys today. A little disclaimer: I'm really not the best at crafting so don't expect anything too fancy, haha! I hope you enjoy reading :)
Some of you may be wondering what a memory jar actually is, or at least how the concept works. Basically it is what it says on the tin... you fill a jar up with all of your favourite memories of the year, so that just before the New Year arrives you can look back over the previous twelve months and be reminded of all of the little things that made it an awesome year for you. I'm sure that you are just supposed to put memories in it, but I'm also going to add to mine: little things that made me smile or that I was proud of myself for or just literally anything that I think is going to be something that I can look back on and think, yeah that was one of my highlights of 2018 :)
You can buy memory jars on Etsy and other places around the internet, however I just really like the personal touch of homemade ones. I've seen so many cool designs on Pinterest that people have done for theirs, making fancy labels and decorating their jars in such pretty, elaborate ways. I am always a little jealous of how talented some people are at crafting :') because I'm really not. I couldn't even manage to draw a straight lined box the other day whilst using a ruler... like how can I not? hahaha. Oh well nevermind, I decided that I wouldn't be defeated by my serious lack of hand-eye coordination skills and created my own memory jar anyway!
I think my memory jar turned out quite pretty, if I do say so myself :) What do you guys think?
I was going to originally go for a green themed design because green is my favourite colour but I decided that I wanted to make my jar bright and happy, in the hope that it would make me more motivated to keep adding to it throughout the year. I have a habit of starting projects and never finishing them, oops!, but I'm hoping that when I look at this on my new desk (that is taking me forever to set up, because I have still not gotten my bedroom decorating done!), I will feel inspired to keep at it. I just think it would be lovely to go through it at the end of the year, so fingers and toes crossed that I don't give up. I can do this!
Keep reading to find how more about how I designed my memory jar label :)
For the dotty gold background/base of my label, I used a piece of card from one of those paper/cardstock pads. You might have seen them in stores like The Range or The Works. I usually get most of mine from The Works, and use them for photography backgrounds, however this particular sheet is from one of the pads that you can find in Poundland. They sell a variety of different pads and they are all really lovely. They are just called 'Cardboard Patterns'; you get 16 sheets in 8 designs in each pad, and this one was one of their glittery versions. I am always super impressed by the stationery bits that they sell in Poundland :) I've seen really similar-looking products sold in crafty shops for over double the price!
I wanted to make the background for my label an interesting shape to resemble some of the designs that I've seen other people use for their own. I spent ages thinking about this and searching through my craft supplies for inspiration, but couldn't find anything that was just right. I sat on my bed and was feeling like I would never come up with a design, when I looked down at my cardstock pad that I'd chosen the dotty sheet from, and I thought that the shape that was surrounding the title on the cover was just what I was looking for! So I literally cut this out and then drew around it onto my card of choice.
As you can see in my photographs, I then just simply cut out a strip of plain white paper and wrote Memory Jar across it using a pink shade from my pack of 12 Staedtler fibre-tip pens. I did want to write it in a fancier font but I made several attempts and I couldn't get it to look like I wanted so my boring old handwriting will have to do! I added a little decoration to the end of my writing using a yellow felt tip and some sparkly pink enamel dot style stickers that I got from Hobbycraft, I think :)
To finish off my label, I adorned the dotty gold base with these super cute flower stickers that I ordered ages ago from a Japanese Etsy store. They are so pretty, that I didn't want to use them for such a long time! But I thought that this would be a fabulous way to not let them go to waste, because I can re-use my jar each year! I'm very happy; these stickers really completed the whole look that I was going for! You can find out more about the stickers in this post I wrote for World Stationery Day back in 2016.
My label is pretty simple, which reflects my skill set when it comes to crafting, but I love it and I'm still a little proud of how it turned out. I felt like the jar was just missing something though, so I decided to use up some of my left over Christmas present wrapping ribbon? I never remember what this stuff is called, haha! It will do for now, but eventually I want to buy a pretty piece of lace from the haberdashery stall on my hometown's market, to tie around my jar and make it just that little bit prettier :)
Speaking of using up left over Christmas bits, I also threw some little silver snowflake and star confetti into the bottom of my jar. I think it will be cheerful to see when I tip out the contents of my jar on New Years Eve this December, and all of the confetti sprinkles out! I am planning on adding multi-coloured pieces of paper to my jar with my memories and such written on, and then tie a little yarn around them to keep them from unravelling. They'll look like mini scrolls, how flippin' cute will that be!?
So, I hope that you all enjoyed reading about my latest creative project and that I have encouraged some of you to make your own jar. That would make me super happy! Let me know if you do! I'm delighted that I already have something to write down and put in my jar even though it's only the second week of January. I'm starting off 2018 the right way apparently, let's hope it keeps going this way :) Have a fabulous week lovelies!
Thankyou for reading!
♥
Have you ever made anything similar to a memory jar?
Do you have any crafty projects planned for this year?
I'd really appreciate it if you could check out my social media guys!
