Me and the fence post

My hubby says I have a problem with clutter...maybe...maybe not. This time he said he was wrong! ;)  I found this piece of picket fence in our "back forty" as we call part of our yard. I brushed it off and kept it on the porch for weeks while I tried to work out in my head exactly how I needed to go about getting where I wanted to be. Sometimes the ideas come right away and sometimes not...

 Here's what I used to get to my end result:

I found the wicks and glass holders for the mason jars here http://putitinajar.com/store/. They have just about everything I could think of that I might want to convert any mason jars laying around the house. They even have conversion kits for wine bottles!

The fence section originally had 6 pickets but I had only ordered 5 wicks and holders. Soooo while the hubby was gone, I pulled out the circular saw and cut one of the pickets off. (First time using the saw and will definitely be doing it again! How come men don't tell you it's fun?) Then I measured the spaces for the jars. And my version of measuring is normally eyeballing it, laying a string (ok I used my tablet cord to string across the boards) and marking dots with a Sharpie marker. Then I pulled out the power drill (first time for that too and just as much fun!) and drilled a hole in each picket.

Once the holes were wide enough for the zip ties I started on the jars. I bought 5 pipe hangers that were 3-1/2" each to attach to each jar. I filled each jar with some children's play sand and some shells I had from the Charleston beaches. I added some glass beachy charms on wire around the neck of each jar. Once that part was finished, I attached the pipe hangers to the fence with the zip ties, screwed the hangers to the lids of the jars making sure to tighten the screws so they stayed put. I added oil to each jar and then screwed the jars to the lids. 

Here's a photo with 2 jars completed and the other 3 hangers attached.

And a close up of one jar

Here's the completed fence section lit with one of my coffee can lights. Start to finish, it really only took me about an afternoon. I love that it wasn't something that I had to stop and come back to because of time.

 I'm trying to come up with a way to attach hangers on the back for "legs". That way, I could move it out into the yard depending on the nights we in the yard versus on the porch. It would also make it a little safer for the porch. Right now it's just leaning against the wall. I was thinking about maybe those old fashioned drawer pulls that are coming back in style or maybe I could find some hinges that would work. Maybe I need to go wander the hardware store.

I think that it turned out very nicely for one of my "winging it" projects. And the hubby now understands a little better my obsession with "NO...don't throw that away yet!"