Crafty To Be Read Jar (A Health Storylines Challenge)

Here we are at the end of May! So let’s get on with this month’s Health Storylines Challenge! This month it’s a project so I hope you’re ready to get crafty!

Reading and crafts are an excellent way to distract yourself to cope with pain. Honestly they’re two of my top choices to try to distract myself from pain. If you’re a bookworm like me, then you have piles of books on every available flat surface you can reach. But one of my main problems is I have so many books that I want to read that I don’t know which I want to choose. 

A solution to this problem that I thought was really fun, is to make something called a To Be Read (TBR) Jar. in short every book title along with the author's name will be written on a slip of paper and put into the jar. Then you shake the jar up and read whatever you pick out. If you have multiple books in series in your TBR pile, write down the first books title but mark it in some way so you know that it’s part of a series.

Things You’ll Need

• Mat or news paper to cover your table
• Mason jar of any size
• Your TBR pile/list
• Paper
• Pen
• A few different colors of  acrylic paint
• Sponges
• Glitter (Optional)
• String or Ribbon (Optional)

So now let’s get crafty and make this jar! 

1. Get any sized glass mason jar whichever size you prefer. If the mason jar was used for something else, like a old jelly jar you cleaned out. If there was a label on it and it’s still sticky I suggest using WD40 to get the label stickies off it works quite well. Just be careful if you have breathing issues, I recommend asking for help just in case the smell is too strong for you. After you use the WD40 to get the stickies off, make sure you thoroughly wash the jar again in soap and hot water afterwards. 

2. So next we went to set up our work area to make sure we do’t get paint everywhere. For this craft I used Acrylic paint, it’s usually my paint of choice and in my opinion the better choice of paint for this project. Make sure you have plenty of paper towels and I would also recommend cutting the sponge into smaller pieces so it’s easier to use. They don’t need to be super small, maybe around the size of a silver dollar.

3. Now that we have everything ready, let’s make this jar! So to achieve the galaxy look of my jar squeeze out lines of your paint (if you have three paints make a line of paint for each color). Carefully dip your sponge in the paint lines be careful not to mix the paint together too much. 

4. Just start dabbing the paint on the jar. Tilt the sponge around to get more of less of a certain color. I’d also recommend adding a very tiny amount of white paint to break up the colors a little. And if you have small hands, you might actually be able to fit your hand inside the jar and be able to keep turning it around that way so you don’t smear the paint.

5. if you’re putting glitter on it, make sure you it’s out and ready to go. Once your jar is completely covered in paint the way you like it, add a last fine layer of paint. Now you’re going to dust it with glitter, that last layer of paint was o make sure the glitter sticks to the jar. I would also recommend you do this over the trash can since glitter goes everywhere.  

6. Now to break up the colors of the jar you could wrap a plain piece of yarn or ribbon around the lid. 

7. While the jar is drying it’s time to work on writing your TBR pile on strips of paper. You could make marking so you can tell which genre the book is. Have fun with it!

I hope you all had fun with this crafty challenge! I’d love to see the TBR jars you guys create so use #SSHealthChallenge on social media. Health Storylines is an app that helps you manage your illness and things you have to do. To sign up for a free Health Storylines account, click here to sign up and then download the app from the App Store.