Patriotic Mason Jar!
Looking for a fun, inexpensive way to add a patriotic vibe to your decor? For this project, you only need a glass jar, some wood flowers and a few bits of filler! Maybe some star glitter if you are feeling extra fancy 
Paint Your Mason Jar!
I had painted this jar a long time ago by pouring in a little white craft acrylic paint and swirling it around the sides until it had covered the inside (be sure to let it dry with the open lid facing toward the ground so paint doesn't pool at the base of the jar). You can also spray paint the outside of the jar if you prefer!
Paint Your Flowers!
Grab some craft acrylic paint and mix it with some water and you are ready to use the dip dye method to paint your wood flowers! For a full blog on how to best do this, check it out here.
Fix Your Flowers!
Sometimes, the colors you choose end up not being the colors you want for your piece. The original blue and red that I had chosen were way too bright for the vibe I wanted.
We get asked a lot of you can re-dye wood flowers after they have been already dyed a certain color so I decided to put that to the test! The first thing I learned is that it is much easier to go from a lighter color to a darker color. I mixed up a navy blue with water and glycerin and dipped my bright blue flowers in that. Then I took a darker red and did the same for my red flowers. It worked great!!
I also wanted to jazz up some of my blue flowers with a glitter that had gold stars in it so once the flowers were dry, I used a paint brush to add the glitter paint directly to the flowers. It gave them the perfect touch.
Prep Your Flowers and Greenery!
To stem your flowers, add a dab of hot glue to the bottom of the flower and insert an 18 gauge floral wire stem into the bottom.
Greenery can be a little trickier to prep but here are some of my favorite tips:
- Use your wire cutters to remove each individual stem from the greenery/filler bundle. I cut as close to the "handle" as possible.
- Remove the leaves/filler that are close to the base of the individually cut stem. You'll only need the top section (at most around 3" from the tippy top for a small arrangement), so pull off the pieces below that. Use scissors or wire cutters to remove the extra nubs from the stem. We will stem those extra leaves next!
- Some leaves have a little "cup" at the bottom which is how they held onto the original stem. You can glue the floral wire directly into that cup.
- Other leaves/filler have a hole at the base. For these, I like to insert my floral wire into the hole and loop it over. You can use needle-nose pliers to secure it into place or just give it a tight squeeze with your fingers.
- Some fillers may have very short stems after you cut them from the handle. To lengthen them enough to place into arrangements, I will use floral tape or vinyl tape to attach a separate floral stem.
Pop In the Baby's Breath!
The baby's breath added in first serves as a guideline for how wide I want the whole arrangement to end up. Simply cut the stems down to the height you want them to stand out from the mason jar!
Add Your Flowers!
Time to add the flowers!
Top left photo - I started by adding in one of each color flower. Usually I add in flowers by sizes but since this is a smaller container, I was mainly concerned with making sure the colors were evenly distributed.
Top right photo - I continued adding flowers in bunches of 3's, one white, one red, one blue.
Bottom left photo - Now that the jar was starting to fill out, I wanted to make sure my blue jasmine flowers (with the gold star glitter) had room to be added and would stand out in the mix!
Bottom right photo - When I felt there were enough medium sized flowers in the jar, I added in mini flowers to help fill gaps in the piece.
Finish With Filler!
The final step in our mason jar arrangement is to add pops of white filler to help fill any additional gaps that exist and to help round out the shape.
Time to Display!
Now you have a wonderfully patriotic arrangement to use as a centerpiece for your dining room table or as a beautiful accent decor piece for your backyard bbq!
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