At the end of every year, I think back to all of the things we have done in the last 12 months.
2015 was a little bit of a rough one for my family.
So as I look back, it's easy to remember all of the tough times,
and the wonderful memories of things we experienced (and there were plenty of wonderful things)
are a little more elusive.
No one is exempt from hard times.
But what makes them easier to bear is being grateful and focusing on the good!
So I decided to make a JOY jar for my family!
Its a way to collect good memories through out the upcoming year!
The supplies I used are:
a glass, clasping jar
armour etch click here for amazon affiliate link
vinyl
die cut machine
I designed a simple JOY in all caps in the Silhouette sofware and then cut it with my Silhouette.
I removed the outside "stencil" part of the word and stuck it onto my jar.
I made sure to push all of the edges of the words down very well to
keep the etch cream from settling underneath.
I brushed on the etch cream with a sponge brush according to the instructions on the bottle.
I let it sit for 10 minutes and then washed it off with cold water.
Then I carefully peeled the vinyl off to reveal my word etched onto the jar perfectly!
I put a black piece of cardstock into the jar just so the JOY
would be easier to read.
I used supplies from Jen's paper crafting line to decorate the jar.
I hot glued the gold clip directly to the jar to hold the bag with punched paper circles.
I folded the kraft glitter bag to make a smaller pocket,
used the gold circle stickers for the date and added some black,
white and gold trim around the edge of the jar.
As we experience good things in the new year,
we'll record these things on one of the paper circles...
and put the circle with each memory into the jar.
At the end of 2016, I want to pull out all of the circles
and read them with my family to remind us of all of the good things we experienced.
I'm hoping to make this a yearly tradition.
So I'll put the used circles, with all of our good memories,
back into the bag that says 2016 and store it away.
Then I'll make a new bag with the next year and clip it onto the jar.
One can never have too many reminders of JOYful experiences!!
