I recently came across a Lifehacker post about a DYI project to make Sun Jars and was inspired to try it myself. It is easy to do– in fact my method was even easier than Lifehacker’s– and the results are spectacular.
For this project you need a jar, a solar LED garden light, frosted glass paint and epoxy.
First, a few words about the materials used.
I found these excellent Westinghouse solar garden lights in the Home and Garden section of our local Fred Meyer. The label on the underside of the box calls them “WH Gladiator 1PC Pewter”, the packaging also calls them “Item #474005-41″ from International Development Corp. and Westinghouse. I’ve searched Google for all of these keywords and can’t find these lights anywhere, so I just bought a bunch from Fred Meyer. These lights are perfect because they fit perfectly into the lid of the jar so you don’t need to dismantle the light like the Lifehacker post instructs.
Commenters on the Lifehacker page reported problems finding jars for this project. I found quite a few at local stores (Fred Meyer and McDaniel’s Do it Center), and McDaniel’s happily ordered me more when I exhausted their stock. Amazon lists them as in stock, so they’re out there.
[UPDATE] it rained recently and we were dismayed to find that the Fred Meyer jars actually filled with water! The “Fido” jars I got from McDaniel’s, however, did not have this problem. So I definitely recommend getting “ermetic” jars.
Let’s go!
First, dismantle your jar, removing the lid and the wire latch. Keep the pieces, especially the small wire loop that keeps it all together.
Paint the outside of the jar with your Frosted Glass paint. You don’t need lots of coats, just one will probably do just fine. You do want even coverage, however, so spray lightly and don’t get too close to avoid pooling the paint on the surface.
While the paint dries let’s work on the lid.
Remove the light from the stick/reflector part, just rotate it and it will come apart. Discard the stick/reflector part unless you can find another use for it as an olympic torch or magic wand or something. Mix your epoxy and apply it to the top of the light assembly as shown in the picture. You should first place your light into the lid of the jar to a) make sure it fits and b) get a sense of what surfaces of the light come into contact with the glass lid. To me it felt like the contact was around the ring of the light, not just the top face, so I applied my epoxy to the edge as well as the top.
After the epoxy is on the light, set it into the lid and allow the two to bond.
When your paint is dry and epoxy completely set you’re ready to reassemble the jar.
If you haven’t already done so, pull the plastic tab from the light assembly, this engages the rechargable battery.
That’s it! You’re done.
Put in the sun to charge and when it gets dark enjoy your new Sun Jar.
This morning I woke up at around 3:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to go ahead and start driving toward home.
The night’s sleep in the Walmart parking lot was uneventful, though Jessie said she heard a horn honk shortly before we left. Maybe the horn contributed to my waking, probably more I was just excited to get home.
The sun rose as we were in eastern Washington, west of Spokane. The Palouse is so beautiful, especially when bathed in the light of dawn.
But later we drove through an area where a massive wildfire that has been burning for the last few days. A thousand fire fighters are fighting the blaze that has so far consumed more than 19,000 acres. The smell of smoke still hangs in the air and it looks like another planet, so desolate is the landscape.
At Coulee City Jessie got behind the wheel and I slept until Leavenworth. Then we gassed up for the final push over Stevens Pass and home.
So here we are, home a day earlier than planned, but glad to be back to our familiar surroundings. The trip was wonderful and we certainly have many great memories.
I’ve been playfully threatening Jessie that we were going to stay in WalMart parking lots during the trip and she has not very playfully said “No Way!”
Well, here we are on what may be our final night in the RV, Jessie is a asleep and I’m driving, and I see a Walmart beside the freeway. Oh, we gotta do it!
While fueling up the RV in Billings this morning I saw this ad placed above the pump that caught my attention. The ad is from ZeeCreative a company that offers web design, hosting and other consulting services.
Are there a lot of folks in Billings, MT who are filling up their tanks and thinking, “Who can help me sort out an SSL certificate for my web site?”
On this hill Custer and his men fought against the indians but lost and were killed. There is no way to know how authentic the placements are, but one thing that is neat about the monument is they have gravestones placed where Cavalry soldiers fell. This gives the place more emotion. I was expecting to find just a hill, and a hill indistiguishable from nearby hills would have had much less impact.
I have never seen the popular Deadwood TV show, and I admit I didn’t know it was a real town, but Jessie did and she was thrilled it would be on our way home.
Deadwood is a neat old town that was incorporated in 1876 following the discovery of gold in the area. Many of the old buildings still line Main Street and newer buildings are built to fit in, so it really feels like a step back in time.
After visiting the graves we went down to Main Street to have lunch. I asked the parking garage guy for a restaurant recommendation and he suggested we go to the Midnight Star, owned by Kevin Costner. The Kevin Costner thing kind of went right by me until we got into the restaurant. The walls are covered with photos from his films as well as cases housing customes worn in the films. There were customes from The Untouchables, Robin Hood, Dances with Wolves, and many many more. We joked that there probably wasn’t a display for Waterworld, but our waiter told us that there was. But we didn’t seek it out.
Lunch was good and we hit the road. Deadwood was a neat old town, some day we’ll have to come back and tour around some more.
Leaving the KOA we were stopped by a long line of tractors traveling on the highway.
The woman who stopped us at the intersection told me they were from Iowa and were going to visit Hill City then were going to Mt. Rushmore. There were 42 tractors, all driven by smiling waving grandpas, they were so cute!
We spent our last day at the Mt. Rushmore KOA enjoying their facitilities and relaxing. Sarah Michael and I went on the water slide, went swimming in the pool and played mini golf.
Jessie went on a ride on a horse and she loved it, though she complained about butt and leg soreness later.
At dinner time we weren’t really hungry but at about 8:30pm we decided to use up the last of our firewood and cook over a fire a few hot dogs. It was a lot of fun and got us as close to roughing it as we would get on this trip.
While we ate our campfire dinner we started to see lightning over the hills. The clouds moved closer as did the lightning. The wind was really coming up too so we put up the awning and put everything away. It started to rain while we were in the RV and the lightning continued. Sarah Michael pulled out her new digital camera and made a video of the lightning.
It was a good end to our visit in the Black Hills and the KOA. We hope to come back!
