Motivation Jars - A Tutorial

I found another great {pin}spiration project to do. 

Last week I saw some Motivation Jars on Pinterest. One said "Pounds Lost" and the other was "Pounds to go". The jars had marbles that you transfer as you lose weight. COOL! What a fun way to get motivated to lose weight. I have been working on losing weight myself and knew this was something I wanted to do. I found the original idea HERE.

I made mine with shorter, square shaped jars and used glass beads.

...Here are my supplies...

2 glass jars

small multi-colored glass beads

large multi-colored glass beads

letter stickers

mod podge

small paintbrush

motivational print out (image available below)

scissors

For my jars, I wanted to have something extra. So I made up some motivations in PS5 for my glass beads. I thought it would be cool to have a motivational word or picture on the beads. I even made the larger beads to use as milestones. 

I don't need to lose 100 lbs. but I made this for others to use. I know a few people who have lost 100 lbs or more and they would have liked to use these. So here ya go, for anyone who may like to use these.

Save the image below for your personal use only. Thanks.

 Once you have it printed out, just cut out each one to use on your beads. I left the circles on the image so you would have a template to go by. I cut them all inside the circle. Removing the black circle completely. Next I added some mod podge to the bottom of the bead, added my image and covered again with mod podge to seal it.

I did use all the images on this ONE page, but no more. There are 56 images on this page. If you want you can print out more of the smaller images and make more, or like I did, just add plain beads in to mix it up.

These are how mine turned out. I LOVE how they look!

Now when you move over your beads, you may get a cute image or a motivation. ;D All the larger ones, for the milestones, turned out great. I love that I can pull out that 5, 10, 20 lbs markers to show my progress. It feels great every pound you lose, but 5, 10 lbs and more seem to be so rewarding. Don't you think?

Why the LBS? 

Did you ever wonder why the abbreviation for pounds was LBS? I did, so I looked it up. LOL 

The abbreviation LBS is based on the word "LIBRA" A Libra was the basic unit of weight used by Ancient Romans. Similar to todays English Pound. The word in Latin means "BALANCE" or "THE SCALES".

Ok, back to the project. haha....next I added the stickers to the jars. I found this really cool black, silver letters. But once I got them on there, they didn't look right at all. I could barely read them with the beads in the jar. Here is what they looked like before I fixed them.

The beads look cool in there, don't they? Toot! Toot! 

I know, I'm tooting my own horn there. SORRY! ;D

So to fix my problem, I grabbed a black sharpie and started to color over the silver. It was not fun, but luckily the silver part came off. I took off all the silver off each letter. :( I really liked my letters.

The letters were still a little dim so I went ahead and touched them up with my sharpie. Much Better. Still not great. But we learn as we go right? And I am sure you will learn from me by not buying the wrong letters. HAHA!

Here is my final pic. I am happy with how they turned out and look forward to using them. YEAH! 

One other thing I changed was my "POUNDS TO GO" jar actually says "POUNDS TO LOSE". I just liked that better. 

The letters look crooked in this pic. They really are straight. :( sorry for the bad pic. Plus my counter doesn't help much. Kinda dark. Oops.

What do you think? Will you make some of these jars? If you need them, that is! LOL

Don't forget to come back tomorrow to link up some {pin}spiration of your own in our Pinterest Challenge Party.