Jar Jack-O-Lanterns

I recently saw an activity in Family Fun magazine that I thought would be a lot of fun for my kids. Basically, you take clean, empty jars and paint them orange. Before painting, however, you put masking tape in the shape of a Jack-O-Lantern's face on the jar. When dry, you take off the tape, revealing the face. Then, light a candle inside or use a flameless candle and VOILA!  Jar Jack-O-Lanterns. This activity is fun, inexpensive, and easy. I decided to do it on a day that I watch a fourth child as a pre-Halloween activity.

The kids really enjoyed covering the jars in orange paint. I made the faces ahead of time with the tape and just had them pick out which jar that they wanted. This was just to save time. If I do it again, I would let them do the faces and would make the openings bigger. I also would use acrylic instead of tempera. That was actually my original plan because acrylic tends to cover better, but I didn't have any orange acrylic paint and had a whole bottle of the tempera. 

It DID however, look like a pumpkin massacre all over the art table when they finished. Maybe I should just display the art table on Halloween....

Once they finished drying, I was eager to see the final results. Here they are! They will definitely be out front on Halloween... imperfections and all.

The jars after drying before candles.

The jars all lit up... the faces are a little hard to see.

The winner of the easiest to see face is Kate's.