Sun Jars

I found a site that had a tutorial on how to fit solar lights into mason jars to make... solar mason jars. I figured it'd be a great little project to do with Hayden. Here's the link to the original site at Life Hacker. I bought similar lights to the ones that they used (since my Lowes didn't have the exact ones.) I got the frosting spray there as well. The mason jars came from Wal-Mart. Also, I used superglue instead of tape... it seemed like a better idea.

So, to start we have snips, a 7 level (little screwdriver), a regular screw driver, some glue and some free time. The free time was the hardest to come by.


The first step is to get the hardware off the mason jars and frost them. This is really straight forward and by doing it first they can dry well you're doing everything else. (please disregard my brown Texas grass. It's winter here. When it's summer... it's slightly less brown.)


Step two is to take apart the solar lights. On mine there are three screws that hold on the top.


The guts look like this. Basically there's the panel, the light sensor and the controller for the battery and such. Pay close attention to that red dot. It covers the light sensor and we're going to need to save it for later.


If you push on the solar panel it'll pop right off. Just give it some slow steady pressure.


After that you can use the snips to cut the glue that holds the light sensor in place. Just snip the dried glue and it will pop right off.


You can now cut away all the excess plastic. You should end up with this.



Then you glue the solar panel to the top of one of the jars.


After that you glue the light sensor in place as well. Make sure it's facing the same direction as the solar panel!


Lastly, glue on the battery case to the back. It should all fit right on the solar panel.


Here's a completed one... except I picked it up before the glue set and it fell apart. On that note... wait till the glue sets.


The completed project looks like this.



Hayden and Seri are stoked with them. They're running around with their sunlight in a jar right now. We're going to use them on the back deck as a table light. All in all it was a cool project that cost about $10 a jar. We made 4 all together. It was a great time to spend with two sick kids while missing work!