(sort of) completed: tinted mason jars

closeup

The summary:

The good news: it worked! 

The bad news: it dripped!

Inside method: Not so great!

Outside method: Much better!

Here are the results of my recent mason-tinting jar adventure. I made five jars total (sadly only four are pictured - I finished the fifth after these photos were taken). As you can see, I did two purple, one pink, and one orange. (The fifth is also orange).

I used Mainstays wide-mouth quart jars from Wal-Mart ($7.44 for 12!), and used the following mixture:

1/2 tablespoon water
1 spoonful (not an exact tablespoon) Mod Podge
3-5 drops of food coloring (for the pink I used three drops of red; for the purple I used three drops of red and two drops of blue; for the orange I used two drops of red and three drops of yellow)

And that's it!
I mixed in disposable bowls using disposable spoons. Bad for the environment, good for my drain.

see the drips? 

Inside-tinting: For the pink and one of the purple jars, I swirled the mixture around the inside, let the excess mixture drip back out, stuck them in a 200F oven for three minutes upside-down, and then left them in there right-side up for approximately 45 minutes in a vain attempt to get the drips to go away. This was not very successful. The jars are very drippy. For the orange jar, I let it drip out onto a paper bag for a few minutes before putting it into the oven right-side up. This was more successful, although still not perfect - as you can see, there is a distinct ring of orange gluey mixture around the bottom of the jar.

Outside-tinting: For one of the purple and the not-pictured (but perfect!) orange jar, I made the same mixture (I actually used the leftover from coating the insides of the other jars), and carefully painted it on the upside-down jars using a small sponge brush. This worked out pretty well, except that it is difficult to then move the jars into the oven. I would suggest painting them on a wax paper-covered cookie sheet and then transferring the whole thing into the oven. I left the purple one in the oven for almost a half-hour, and the not-pictured orange jar for almost an hour (by accident).

Conclusion: I much prefer the outside method, although it is not as fun to do. The outside method is also preferable because then the jars can be used to hold flowers, floating candles, and other watery things (but not for drinking! glue is bad for your health!) and the inside-tinting would not work so well for these purposes.

pretty but imperfect

Apparently, I can remove the tinting from the jars that did not turn out so well (coughallofthemcough) using soapy warm water. I will probably try this as well - although the jars are still pretty, they are not what I had hoped to achieve.

Edited to add: Warm water is all your need to remove the coloring. It peels off in big sticky sections. I found it easiest to warm up the glue coloring with warm water, let it stand for a few minutes, and then try to take it off. It's challenging to get the glue out of the inside of the jars - another reason to try the outside method.

I am going to experiment with using more food coloring to get darker colors, but I think I will be doing it all using the outside method from now on.

pretty shadows!