Floral Glass Jar Upcycle with Acrylic Pens

Recently I was given the most beautiful bumper box full of acrylic brush pens from the lovely people at Arrtx and have been trying them out on different surfaces for a little while.

This tutorial is not a paid ad for Arrtx but they did provide me with the pens free of charge. Arrtx acrylic pens are not cheap but I’ve found them to give great coverage, be non streaky on most surfaces and flow really smoothly. The range of colours is amazing. Each pen does seem quite small so I will feedback later when they start to run out to give you an idea of how long they last.

The results of my experiments so far have been shared over on Instagram and Facebook. I tried them out on different card and paper surfaces and made a few art pieces, some with just the acrylic pens from this pack and sometimes mixing them with other pens and paints that I already have.

I’ll add the results of all those experiments at the bottom of this tutorial in case you are interested but today I want to share with you my personal favourite thing that I’ve done with these acrylic paint brush pens - a meadow of flowers on an old glass jar.

I don’t want to blow my own trumpet too hard but safe to say as I was drawing these flowers on the glass I got more and more excited as I went along. The results were coming out even better than I could have hoped.

The paint flows smoothly from these pens and the colours are so beautifully vibrant.

I free hand drew my flowers onto my glass jar and I want to promise you now that none of the shapes I drew to create the flower meadow effect are difficult at all. It’s built up of wavy lines and REALLY simple shapes.

If you are not feeling confident enough to just paint your own flower meadow though I’ve got you covered! I have put together a paper template which you can print off, trim to size and then place inside your jar as a guide. Just click the button below, you should be able to open and print the design.

Whatever your skill level when it comes to drawing I would urge you to have a go, it really is the most fun.

Painting a flower meadow on a glass jar with acrylic brush pens

To create a flower meadow jar you will need:

• An empty glass jar

• Acrylic brush pens - mine are from Arrtx

• A large book - to use as a stand

• A paper towel and cotton bud (q-tip) for fixing mistakes

• A couple of hours - it doesn’t take that long to paint the design but you want to let each bit dry before you add more

Your glass jar must be really clean before you start painting so give it a good wash in hot soapy water and dry it thoroughly with a tea towel. (or any other non fluffy cloth) Even if you think your jar is clean it’s worth giving it another wash just to be sure. Dust or grease will stop the paint from going on nicely.

Open a large book to the middle and lay your jar down in the centre. This will hold your round jar in place and make it much easier to paint your design. You could prop your jar up with something else either side but a large book works really well.

Pick out the pens you want to use. You’ll need 2 or 3 shades of green and maybe 3 other colours, each in a dark and light shade ideally. I used:

• light green, mid green, dark green.

• light and mid pink.

• light and mid blue.

• light straw colour and a brighter yellow.

• mid brown.

You can go mad with your colour palette and chose 10 different colours if you like but I find sticking to just 3 flower colours and green helps keep everything cohesive.

Alternatively you could just stick to 1 flower colour if that’s what you prefer. Your art, your rules.

Painting the flowers

You are going to work on the jar a section at a time. Just the section you can easily access when it’s lying in the book. Don’t start swizzling it round whilst your paint is still wet, things will smudge and you don’t want that. Just take your time, allow plenty of drying time between each step. I painted my jar whilst I was doing a boring admin job on my computer. 1-2 minutes of painting followed by 10 minutes of boring admin - repeat as necessary. It’s the perfect way to make boring jobs more fun!

If you make a mistake you can wipe if off with a damp paper towel as long as you do this immediately. A cotton bud (q-tip) is handy for tiny mistakes.

Start by drawing some stems. Wavy lines that go up from the bottom of the jar. Vary the height a little.

Let it dry. (The Arrtx pens took maybe 10 mins to dry on a warm sunny day, if you are using a different acrylic marker it might vary)

Add a few leaves, big leaves, small leaves. Some in the same green, some in different greens.

Let it dry.

Add some simple flowers at the top of some of your stems using the mid shades of your chosen colours.

Let it dry.

Add some highlights to the flowers in the lighter shades. Maybe an outline, or some lines coming out from the centre. Add some highlights to some of the leaves.

Let it dry.

Paint some smaller flowers - these are mostly just dots so super simple. Add some yellow or brown dots to the larger flowers to form centres.

Let it dry.

Twizzle your jar round so another section is uppermost and start the process again.

Don’t forget to let it dry between every step. I know I keep banging on about this but it’s easy when painting on a jar to smudge your work. Your fingers or hand can easily smudge wet paint without you realising. Much easier to just take it slowly, one tiny step at a time.

When most of the larger flowers and stems are in place you can start checking for gaps. A cluster of stems in green (allowed to dry of course!) and then topped with colourful dots looks really cute. Or even just a couple of oval shaped green shapes to give a “there’s a plant here” vibe.

Once I had filled all around my jar with flowers and stems I finished by adding some colourful dots over the unpainted sections. I was thinking they gave a “petals in the breeze” kind of look. If you check out any of my doodles or art ideas to be honest they almost always have dots somewhere, seems I really like a dot!

Now you need to be really patience and leave everything for a couple of days to really dry and “go off” completely.

Once the paint has really gone off after a few days then the design won’t just wipe off easily. You could still scratch it off with your fingernail, by plunging it into hot soapy water and scrubbing with a scourer or putting it through the dishwasher but it will be fairly resistant to normal handling. You can definitely wipe it with a dry cloth, no problem at all. A quick splash of water as you fill it to use as a vase - no issue.

I’m going to experiment with some sort of clear varnish to see if that works without changing the look of the painting and will report back soon.

This pretty jar would be a perfect little vase. Or you could keep the lid, spray paint it in a matching colour and give it as a gift filled with chocolates, or hair ties, or how about packets of wild flower seeds.

I tried to fill my flower meadow vase with wild flowers but we are having real drought conditions here just now so there were slim pickings in the hedgerows. This was all I could find, still pretty and you get the idea.

Honestly, this little jar is even prettier in real life than it looks in these photos. It might look like a complcated design but all the shapes are simple and the trick is really to build things up slowly, a little at a time.

I found these Arrtx brush pens covered really well. Occasionally I gave an area a 2nd coat to make the colours really pop, like on the pink flower petals for example. I found the coverage was great when I was dotting tiny “flowers” over green stems.

As promised here are some of the other experiments I’ve attempted with my pack of Arrtx acrylic paint pens so you can see how they perform on white and kraft card. These are all on my Instagram as well along with some short videos of the process.

Do you have an old glass jar that needs a flower meadow makeover?

Julie

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