DIY baking ingredient jars

Last week I embarked on a project that was well overdue...for a while I've had my baking goods (flour, sugar, etc.) in un-labled glass containers in the pantry. I knew which was which from the size of the container, and from looking at the contents. One night I realized maybe that's not the best system for others in my house (aka the Mr.) - he was making a delicious dinner for me, and used some flour to thicken the sauce he was cooking...except instead of flour, it was non-descript icing sugar he grabbed. Woops. Fortunately it didn't change the sauce too much because it was a very small amount, but from there on in he started asking for labels!

My friend Lindsey at Recreated did a great DIY Spice Jar post a while back and these served as my inspiration:






















Aren't those fantastic? So cute, and so easy! So, the Mr. and I embarked on a similar project for our baking jars.

We started by emptying out all of the jars:



(and yes, all the contents did stay in bowls on our island for about a week, thanks for asking)

We thought we could make templates out of newsprint, so I got to cutting and the Mr. got to spraying:



We obviously were not following Lindsey's directions because this is what happened:





woops. a few drips and leaks here and there. Back to the drawing board - i.e. actually looking up how to do this and breaking out the frog tape:

Then paint away!



After a little bit of clean-up with paint thinner (especially on the first round of newsprint templates), and a good soapy water wash, the baking ingredient jars were done:



*That round one is my favourite! It's from the newspaper templates but the Mr. cleaned it up for me. I now use it for baking soda so it's easily identifiable from baking powder!