Upcycled Jar Lamps - Label Ideas
by Bernadette Kazmarski
Tabletop lamps or night lights made from upcycled glass jars from sauces, pickles and more with my art and embellishments on the outside and illuminated by battery-operated LED string lights with 6-hour timers.
I print my artwork on the label wrap that around the jar. Sometimes I print just a color on the label and wrap that, then embellish with inks or cut vinyl.
Light shining through the label is key but will standard printing that looks correct with light shining ON it will look faded with light shining THROUGH it. I set up my designs with saturated color, dark darks and high contrast. Sometimes this takes a few tries to adjust depending on the design so I create swatches first and determine which is best rather than waste lots of label material experimenting. Though I have both Epson and Canon inkjet printers for my art prints, greeting cards and other merchandise, I could only get the density I wanted with a color laser printer, but this also provided me with more durability in the life of the design. <br/><br/>This works best with straight-sided jars, and I only use the flat area. Jars for consumer food products generally have a couple of bump-outs on the shoulders and around the bottom that keep the jars from smacking into each other and are reinforced to absorb the shock of impacts. Unless it's very slight, the labels don't stretch to fit over that and will eventually pull up. Instead I paint on that area with inks or glass paints with a solid, marbled or speckled technique depending on the art that I use.<br/><br/>I have several other products wherein I use these labels for their transparency as well.
