Chalk paint and Mason jars

Warm sunshine and melting snow sure do lift my spirits. Add to that the sound of snow sliding off the roof, and I'm practically hysterical.

But I must calm down and write this post, which isn't at all about snow or cold.

My friend Lynn is giving her daughter-in-law a baby shower on the 21st of March. I offered to help.

One thing I've been wanting to try is chalk painting Mason jars. I've seen many on Pinterest, and I think they make wonderful shabby chic decorations.

Lynn liked my suggestion, so I was off and running.

Except...I'd never done any chalk painting. The one thing in my favor was the shelves of Mason jars stored in the basement with my home canning supplies.

I priced chalk paint on Amazon and found it at $24 or so per small can. That seemed a bit ridiculous considering I'd need a minimum of four colors for eight measly jars. $96? No way.

So I googled "homemade chalk paint" and found several recipes.

The one I chose involved small tubes of Apple Barrel acrylic paints from Walmart, at 50¢ a pop, some cornstarch, which I have in my pantry, and a little H2O.

I bought lavender, yellow, aqua, and pink paints and also some white paint to lighten each color a bit. (I wish I'd lightened the yellow a tad more than I did, but oh, well.)

I mixed the cornstarch and water, added the paints, and voila!

Chalk paint at approximately, oh, maybe 10¢ maximum per painted jar.

I gave each jar three coats of paint. For some reason the aqua went on much less cooperatively than the other colors. I even had to totally remove the aqua paint from the jars at one point and start over.

Persistence paid off, though, as it usually does, and I now have eight pastel chalk-painted Mason jars to use as flower vases at the shower.

I've also made a gazillion salt dough hearts to tie to the mason jars. (As you might have guessed, the baby is a girl.)

Now I'm thinking I'd like to take several miscellaneous jars with interesting shapes and chalk-paint them. I think they'd make a pretty Easter display on my mantel.

But as I said earlier, the sun is shining, the snow is melting, and I'm about to go open several windows to bring some fresh air into this too-long-closed-up house.