To go alongside our DIY ghost decoration, we spent one cold and dreary weekend making some DIY apothecary jars ready for Halloween.
We’d been saving glass jars and bottles for a while, but without a plan of what we could do with them.
And then inspiration struck! Here’s how we made some easy DIY apothecary jars out of empty spice jars and tubs of hot chocolate.
Psst! Want to make these yourself? Grab our free printable Halloween apothecary jar labels now!
DIY Halloween Apothecary Jars
What you’ll need:
- Empty jars and containers you want to repurpose
- Our free printable apothecary Halloween labels
- Sheets of sticky labels
- Glue
- Scissors
- Teabags and water (optional)
- Interesting things to fill your jars (optional)
- Trinkets and decorations for your jars (optional)
Instructions
1. Thoroughly clean all your jars and bottles.
Top Tip: Soak them in warm soapy water to remove any old food labels already on them.
2. Print our Halloween labels onto ordinary white printer paper.
Top Tip: Soak a tea bag in a bowl of warm water and drag the teabag across your labels to make them look old and weathered. The longer you hold the bag on top of the labels, the older they’ll look.
3. Using the dotted lines we’ve provided for you, cut out your labels.
4. Using a glue stick, stick your Halloween labels on your sheets of ready made labels and cut around them again.
5. You should now have various labels that you can stick onto your jars and bottles. Smooth the labels out slowly and carefully to avoid air bubbles.
Top Tip: If you’d rather have temporary Halloween apothecary jars then you don’t have to use sticky labels. You could tape some string or ribbon to the back of your printed labels and loop them around a jar or bottle – just like we’ve done with this “eye of witch” pot:
6. Now it’s time to fill and decorate your jars!
What to fill your DIY apothecary jars with
As this is a fun Halloween craft, you can use whatever inspires your imagination. But just in case you’re short on ideas, here’s what we’ve come up with:
- Water dyed with red food colouring or red ink for dragon’s blood
- Water sprinkled with silver glitter for unicorn tears
- Pearlescent beads for unicorn tears
- Blue and silver glitter mixed together for magic pixie, fairy or wishing dust
- Coke or pepsi for witches brew
- Water dyed with green food colouring for beetle juice
- Water sprinkled with blue glitter for mermaid tears
- Milk or water mixed with milk for snake venom
- Garlic granules for bone powder
- Green skittles or smarties for eye of witch
- Novelty eye embellishments or googly eyes for spider eyes and eye of witch
- Water dyed with black food colouring for essence of spider
- Black liquorice sweets for spider legs
- Bat wings cut from black cardstock for wing of bat
- Pink jelly sweets for spleen of bat
Of course, you could also keep your apothecary jars empty if you prefer!
How to decorate your poison bottles and apothecary jars
There are lots of ways you can decorate your jars, as once again, your imagination could lead you anywhere. But here are some ideas to help you get started:
- Tie fabric around your jar lids with elastic bands to disguise any out-of-place plastic lids
- Paint the existing jar lids with black, gold or purple paint
- Tie gold ribbon around the tops of the bottles for some added glitz
- Remove the lids completely and stretch some cling film / saran wrap across the top, which acts as an invisible lid
We hope you have fun making these easy DIY apothecary jars and poison bottles! If you make something inspired by this blog post, then we’d love to see it, so be sure to tag us on Instagram @houseofmahalo!
Did you like this tutorial? Pin it now, make these DIY poison bottles later!
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