Mason Jar Hanging Lanterns

I've been seeing a few posts on craft blogs on how to make lanterns out of mason jars here and there. A lot of them use wires to create a hanging point for the lanterns. Since I do not have wire nor a wire cutter, I thought of using twine instead. Here are some blogs that have directions on how to make mason jar lanterns using wires:

ReadyMade
Make it do
Oh Lovely Day
Chez Beeper Bebe

These are only some of the numerous DYI instructions found by Google when I typed in "mason jar lantern." I found one that uses twines to hang the mason jars at BlogHer. This idea was very cute but I didn't want to make it very complicated.

Below is my lazy way of making mason jar lantern for a fun summer night in the backyard.



I got 10 of the 8 oz. Eco mason jar at Specialty Bottle for $0.88/ea. I saved all of the lids, of course, for future use.




A roll of hemp twine from Michael's. The beefy kind.

After researching some knots, I decided to use the Alpine butterfly knot because it's the easiest one to do and it provides a strong loop with minimal knotting. The Wikipedia page has very clear instructions. I'll also give a quick photo guide on how to do it here.




Measure out about 80 inches of twine. Fold it. Make sure that one side is longer than the other side approximately 1 circumference of the jar's mouth.




Make an open loop at the fold.




Twist the loop once.




Twist the loop again. Holding the loops as pictured, take the top loop (colored in red) and turn it down toward the pinky finger and you'll get the configuration as shown below.




Now the red loop is at the bottom, push it under and through the blue loop...




...like so. Then tug at the side and top to tighten the knot.




Alpine butterfly knot, success!




Wrap the twine around a mason jar right below the screw ridges like so.


Take the longer piece of the twine and wrap it around the jar once. You should end up directly across from the butterfly loop. Tie a knot there.




Start twisting the two pieces of twine around each other.






At the end, insert both twine ends into the butterfly loop you made earlier and tie a knot to secure it. Trim extra twine as necessary.




Ta-da! I also got black sand from Michael's to keep the candle in place.

I had a lot of fun making these lanterns and was very proud of the end result. My sister helped me pour sand and place all candles in the jars. We hung them up on the cherry and jujube trees in the backyard.